


No For Yes

by Yahtzee



Category: Alias
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Jack came to marry "Laura," and the story of how Jack and Irina came together during Sydney's lost years, interwoven into their mutual search for any truth within the lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to my betas, Rheanna and Counteragent.

_"The world is a Noah's ark on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable. And heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is."_

\-- Diane Arbus

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

**August 2003**

 

_Edinburgh, Scotland_

 

The first two attempts to contact her went unanswered. Perhaps he'd failed to reach her; perhaps she didn't want to be reached.

Jack had planned three attempts, but in the second month after Sydney's death, he found that he didn't care enough to try again. He knew how to work alone. Maybe it would take him longer to find Sydney's killers on his own, but he was a patient man, even in this.

To any outside observer – including those who would be watching him within the CIA – Jack knew that his life appeared almost unchanged. He didn't fall into bad habits that had haunted him in the past. His drinking was limited to one Scotch a night, his work in the field strictly by the book. When Jack requested more time out of the country, he said only that he needed a change of scenery. It was as close as he ever came to asking for sympathy, and he despised that, but it was the simplest means of getting what he needed: freedom from observation.

Edinburgh was cool and rainy, a series of walls and hills and roads all in stone: pale gray during the day, dark gray at night. Jack's assignment was a simple dead drop, something an agent 25 years his junior could have done in his sleep. That gave him time and liberty to contact a few informants who weren't in any of his CIA records.

But each of them went silent upon hearing the words "The Covenant."

After the dead drop, Jack went back to his small hotel room. He sat heavily on the side of the bed and removed his shoes, their leather soaked through with rain. Once he'd peeled his socks away and laid them near the radiator, hissing and popping as it attempted to sputter out heat, Jack found that he couldn't stand up – couldn't move, couldn't think.

Grief was like this – a wound that tore open unexpectedly, bleeding fresh and new every time.

Jack put his forearms on his knees and leaned over, staring at the floor and his socks. He tried to think of a good memory of Sydney – something untainted by lies or anger – and he had so little.

When he and Sydney ate dinner together, during her childhood – too rarely – they always did the dishes side-by-side. He washed; she dried. They had few good conversations during those years, so few it shamed him, but a surprising number of those had taken place while they washed the dishes. Jack's theory was that they both found it easier to talk when they didn't have to meet each other's eyes.

He remembered the sink full of suds, her tiny hands reaching for a glass, the damp sleeves of a pink-striped sweater. For a moment, Jack thought he could smell the soap.

Sometime around Sydney's 13th birthday, he'd bought a dishwasher. "About time we joined the twentieth century," Sydney had said, and they'd never shared that small ritual again.

Enough of this. Jack stood up, the damp cuffs of his slacks cold against his bare feet, determined to be in bed within ten minutes and asleep within thirty. But then he heard a rap at the door.

His ears pricked at the sound, and Jack's hand was on his gun almost instantly. Hotel management had no reason to visit him; also, they would announce the visit. His guest was silent. Bracing himself on the far side of the room's oak wardrobe – the best shield available – he called, "Yes?" He expected no answer.

"It's me." She didn't need to say her name; he knew her voice like he knew his own scars.

After one second's consideration, Jack tucked his gun in his belt and went to the door. Irina's hair was pulled back in a severe knot, and raindrops still beaded her trenchcoat. She didn't look directly at him as she walked into his hotel room – this was business, pure and simple. Good.

But then, as they stood on opposite sides of the room, Irina said, "Tell me where she is."

"What?" Jack had thought she couldn't surprise him, but he realized, sinking, that he had been wrong.

"Sydney. Tell me where she is. I realize the reports of her death are false, so if this was merely to make me desperate, you've wasted your time." Irina's eyes studied him, rain-spotted clothing, bare feet and all. "If you have other reasons – that's no concern of mine. But tell me where Sydney is. You owe me that."

He owed Irina nothing, and he knew it, but he could not have lied to her about this. "The reports are true."

"Stop lying to me."

"Irina, it's not a game. It's not a trick."

"Fires are ideal for concealing evidence."

"I made them run the DNA tests six times." Jack had stood there with paper in his hands, rejecting the grids and columns of hard fact, making demands of young technicians who had looked at him with pity that scoured him raw. "I saw the results. The cremation – I signed the forms –"

"It's impossible. It can't be –"

"I went to her funeral."

"You went to mine. Doesn't prove much." Irina cocked an eyebrow at him, but her perfect mask was gone. She knew the truth, down deep, and had known for a while; only fear had kept her from admitting it to herself.

Jack couldn't argue this anymore. He'd spent too many hours wrestling with his own denial; he had no strength left for Irina's. Taking one step forward, he said the words aloud for the first time: "Sydney is dead."

Irina said nothing; the only visible sign of her reaction was the sudden pallor of her skin. After a moment, she sank down into the room's one chair, her posture too regal to be stiff. If Irina had not left her back exposed to an unguarded window, Jack might have believed her completely unaffected by the news.

No. He didn't deceive himself that he knew Irina Derevko well, but he knew better than that. Jack had learned of Sydney's murder in a stark white hospital room, brilliant with light despite the midnight hour, and Dixon standing in the doorway like a priest, slowly bowing his head. The details were irrelevant. The experience was the same.

Silence hung between them, heavy and terrible. Staring at Irina seemed cruel for them both, so Jack sat back down on the side of the bed. It never occurred to him to try to comfort her; he knew it was beyond his power, or anyone's.

"Who?" Irina said at last. Her voice was hoarse, ten years older in a matter of minutes.

"I haven't learned much. But I think her death is connected to a group called The Covenant."

"Covenant?" The word was sharp, obviously familiar to her. Jack looked directly at Irina then; he ignored the tear tracks on her cheeks as completely as she did. "They're Rambaldi followers."

"You know them."

"I know of them. I know people they work with."

His pulse quickened within his chest. For the past two months, Jack had wondered if he still had the ability to produce adrenalin; at times, it had felt as though his body were simply shutting down, day by day. Now blood flowed through him, hot and real. "You can help me find them."

"I can find the Covenant on my own."

"Don't." Jack could have killed Irina. He would have begged her. Anything was better than standing by while Sydney's murderers walked free. "We do this together."

Irina studied him, cool and impassive through red-rimmed eyes. "If the CIA learns that you've contacted me –"

"It doesn't matter."

"No. I suppose it doesn't." Consequences didn't matter to either of them anymore. Jack wondered if she realized that as well – that they could trust one another in this simply because there could be no hidden agendas, no secret plots; neither of them could want anything else but revenge in a world where Sydney was gone, and no price was too high to pay for that revenge. The game theorist understood that they were now incapable of betrayal: Where there is only one goal, and neither party has any reason to deny that goal to the other, an alliance is perfect. Knowing Irina, she probably understood.

Irina stood up slowly, balance uneven, her grace fallen from her. She would come apart later, when she was alone. For now, Jack knew, she was encased in a terrible numbness, dull and stupefying. He had spent hours in the same state, motionless, waiting for the inevitable.

Perhaps he should try to say something to Irina – what, he didn't know, but something. He remembered the day she'd told him she was pregnant with Sydney; they'd had no words then, either, only a silent, enveloping awe that held them fast. Jack had laid his head on Laura's still-flat belly, and she had combed her fingers through his hair.

Sydney was the only thing that had ever been real between them. Now that bond was broken forever, and all that remained was – this.

"If you want to wait a few minutes," he began, "or if there's someone you want to call –"

"I'm fine."

So much for grieving together.

But when Jack walked with Irina to do the door, she held out her hand, as if to shake on their deal. He took it, and they stood like that for a few breaths, palm to palm.

"Can you meet me in Amsterdam in three weeks?" Jack would have time to spare on that mission, too, and the likelihood of surveillance was low. Irina nodded. "Bring what information you can then."

"We'll need other forms of contact. But Amsterdam will do for now." She let go of his hand and reached for the doorknob.

"Wait. Which one of my signals did you see?" Jack needed to how to contact her in case of trouble.

"Both of them."

Where was that omniscience when Sydney needed it? The words couldn't be spoken aloud, but they weighed on Jack nonetheless. He didn't even watch as Irina let herself out.

It felt strange, after that, to go to bed alone, though it shouldn't have. Jack felt no need to repeat their night together in Panama, a strange night that had been more torment than enjoyment even as he moved inside Irina. What greater satisfaction could he have found in an act of pure betrayal?

Irina might have been able to answer that question for him, but he would never ask.

Besides, physical pleasure seemed – alien to him now. He still ate, slept, showered, drank, but Jack hadn't enjoyed any of these things since Sydney died. They were merely motions he went through to keep himself alive in order to perform his one final task. Jack was no longer certain that he was capable of sex, whether his body would answer if he called upon it, and wondered what it meant that this possibility didn't concern him in the slightest.

Preparing for bed took longer than it needed to; he still felt as though he were moving through water, all his muscles sluggish and his responses slow. But Jack was also aware that he was putting off going to sleep. Going to sleep meant waking up again, and waking up was always the worst.

He lay awake in the darkness for more than an hour. Memories taunted him: Sydney kissing his cheek the last time they saw one another in Los Angeles, the day he watched her from afar at Danny's funeral, all those nights they had washed dishes and talked.

Somewhere not very far away, Irina was wrestling with her own memories. Jack couldn't guess what they were, and he didn't think he had it left in him to care.

**

**September 1970**

 

_Washington, D.C._

 

September was autumn in the United States; the American magazines she'd read echoed this fact, and Irina had purchased the clothing they recommended for "back to school": sweaters with broad collars, corduroy slacks, jumpers and skirts in midi length, boots with platform soles. By Soviet standards, such a wardrobe was almost unthinkably luxurious.

Nobody had mentioned that Virginia's September was hotter than the hottest summer Irina had ever known in Moscow.

As she sat in the front row of the classroom (Advanced Sociological Problems of Translation), she could feel sweat pooling between her breasts, on the small of her back, even between her calves and those damnable boots. Irina's consolation was that several other girls seemed to have made the same mistake, though they were Americans who ought to have known better.

Two rows behind her and one seat to the left sat Jack Bristow, her target. Irina had seen his photographs before she ever left the Soviet Union; his face, pleasant but unexciting, was more familiar to her than anything else in this country.

They had yet to speak. If he ever began a conversation with her, she would respond, but thus far he came to class exactly on time, asked no questions, participated in no discussions, then walked out at the end almost before anyone else. Irina thought he'd probably noticed her, though. Most men would. When their first paper was due, she'd ask for his notes. If Bristow was heterosexual, Irina thought, she could manage the seduction from there.

If he wasn't, she'd still want to borrow his notes. Given Bristow's documented attention to detail, he probably kept good ones – and while the KGB selected a new target for her, Irina would still have to get masters degrees in English and Linguistics. As Gerard never stopped reminding her, she had work to do.

Just when the heat in the room became so stifling Irina began to feel ill, class ended. Gratefully scooping up her things, she only half-glanced over her shoulder to see Bristow walking out. He wore a blazer and tie despite the heat, and it didn't seem to trouble him at all.

But she thought he looked at her, for just a moment.

**

"So what?" Gerard lay back in the hotel bed, breathing out cigarette smoke. "Looking isn't progress."

"That's what men think." Irina was too hot to get dressed again, but she found that she no longer enjoyed his gaze on her naked body now that sex was over. He was the only lover of any longstanding she'd ever known; before she left for America, Irina had felt that the occasional visits from Gerard would be her only consolation from the loneliness.

But now Gerard Cuvee was now not only her lover, but her handler. It changed things.

She pulled the sheet over her; it was cooler than nakedness, at first.

"I'd like to have more to report than a few glances."

"So would I. But Bristow has to think our affair is his idea, not mine. Apparently he's a man who takes things slow."

"You'll have to tell me about that, won't you?" Gerard's grin was a parody of lechery, and despite herself, Irina laughed. "I'll be around often enough to take care of you, never fear."

That meant every three or four months – at least, for now. After she had married her CIA agent and proved her worth, he would visit even less. The thought of being left so alone for so long frightened her, as did the fact that she needed Gerard, or anyone.

"I should go." Irina slipped out of bed and began dressing, quickly but completely without self-consciousness; Gerard had seen her do everything. "A girl from school may be coming by to study."

"Her name?"

"Melinda Rogers." Melinda sat in the very back row of the translation class. Irina had memorized her name, along with all the others, on the first day; the two of them had never spoken. But if Gerard double-checked Irina's excuse for leaving him, he would find the name and be satisfied. She wasn't willing to question why she wanted to leave her lover already – she only knew that she did. "And you didn't get anything – in the mail, or –"

"From your family?" His grin was smug; once, she had liked that, when the smugness was directed at others. "Come to think of it – yes."

"What? You didn't tell me? Where?"

Gerard laughed and walked, still naked, to his combination briefcase in the corner. "I wanted to wait to give you these until my last day here. To cushion the blow of my departure."

Irina neither knew nor cared whether his irony was intentional. In her bra and skirt, she ran to him and snatched the file folder from his hands. Letters – from Katya, from Mama, and pictures, so many of them.

"Take your time." His hand was gentle on her hair. "I have the room until tomorrow, and Miss Rogers will understand if you miss your study date. Won't she?"

She couldn't take any of them with her; if they were found, they would destroy her. Irina sat on the corner of the bed, breathing in Gerard's cigarette smoke as she read, flipping through pages so quickly that she ridged her fingertips with paper cuts.

Katya had broken yet another man's heart. Dadushka was ill – and Irina had known when she'd left that she'd never see him alive again, but it hurt to face the reality. And Elena's baby had become so beautiful. One of the photos had been taken the day before Irina left, and the memory of laughing with her niece in her arms filled her with a kind of misery indistinguishable from happiness.

"Thank you," she whispered. It was no more than Gerard's job to give these to her, but her gratitude was too deep not to encompass him along with the rest of the world. He kissed her, his mouth tasting of smoke and ash, and in the resulting flirtation and teasing, Irina was able to tuck the photo of her holding her niece into her purse without any trouble at all.

That night, she hid the photograph, did her homework, washed the dishes and went to bed early. As soon as Irina had snapped off the lamp, the tears began, and they didn't stop until her chest ached from sobbing. It was all right to break down, as long as you chose your time and place, and you didn't choose too often.

**

Saturday dawned even hotter and brighter. Irina longed to spend the entire day in front of her air conditioner, letting it blow her hair away from her flushed cheeks, but she knew her mood well enough to understand this would do her little good.

Instead she slipped on a pair of cutoff shorts and a peasant blouse she'd bought at a thrift shop, tugged her hair up into a high ponytail and set out to do some shopping. Once Jack Bristow entered her life – she'd need a life for him to enter, with more detail than she'd yet been able to create. The KGB could have set her up with props immediately, but she had successfully argued that, for believability, she should construct the world of "Laura Miles" herself. For now, the first goal was to purchase books and music – good conversation pieces, and items she would need time to be familiar with.

The record shop had brilliant psychedelic posters plastered on the walls; dozens of singers seemed to glare at her from behind green- or blue-tinted granny glasses. Irina tugged her own sunglasses down even though the lighting in the story was iffy at best to cloud the vague feeling of being watched.

Her interest in Western pop music began and ended with the Beatles, who had inconsiderately broken up just before she arrived.

Irina lifted up a cornflower-blue LP sleeve emblazoned with the name "Leon Russell." One of the magazines she'd studied was Rolling Stone, and they had praised this record, hadn't they? The man glowering from the front was unattractive. No matter: this would do as well as anything else.

She ought to buy other popular albums, but instead Irina found herself glancing at the back of the store, where a dingy, hand-lettered sign read CLASSICAL. To judge by the dustiness of the bead curtain, Irina thought very few people shopped for symphonies here. But Prokofiev would be a treat – that was one of the few albums they'd owned at home.

Irina slipped through the beads and greedily began sorting through the various categories: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. Couldn't Laura be a classical music enthusiast? Most girls her age wouldn't be, and probably Bristow had a stack of Rolling Stones records at home, but this might be believable for a student of literature –

"Ah – hi."

Glancing up, she saw Jack Bristow standing across the room from her, a Mozart piano concerto in his hands. Her surprise was too great to be instantly covered, but fortunately, he misinterpreted.

"I'm sorry – we have a class together –"

"Right. Translation. Sorry, I didn't recognize you at first." Irina pushed her sunglasses up to her forehead and smiled. "Jack, isn't it?"

He seemed both pleased and surprised to have been remembered. "And you're Laura." Despite the heat, he wore blue jeans and a white shirt, both of which seemed to have been freshly ironed, crisp even in the sweltering back room. A lazy metal fan turned sluggishly in the rafters, cooling nothing but adding a low whirr of sound.

"I thought I was the first person who had visited this part of the store in years," she confided.

"You're the second. I don't think they sell a lot of classical. Every time I come in, the same records are in the same order." Clearly he wanted to say more, but just as clearly he was at a loss. No capacity for small talk, Irina noted. Well, she could work around that. Perhaps he would be one of those quiet men easily captivated by a vivacious woman. Laura could be vivacious.

"What are you looking for?"

"Nothing in particular." Jack was obviously relieved that she'd picked up the thread of the conversation. "I thought I'd see if anything interested me. What about you?"

"Prokofiev," she said with a bright smile. Vivacity wasn't her strong suit, but she could ease into it. "And, ooh, Handel's Water Music, if they've got it."

"The London and Sydney Symphonies. Take your pick, but I strongly suggest London. " He gestured toward the end of her row. "You've already got something –"

"Oh, right. Leon Russell." She shrugged. "I keep telling myself I should join the twentieth century at some point."

He didn't exactly smile – his expression was too subtle for that – but for the first time, she caught something like humor in his eyes. "I never tell myself that."

Irina relaxed, the ill-considered attempt at vivacity already forgotten. "Maybe we should give it a chance."

"I think you'd rather listen to Water Music."

"You're right." Tactically, she ought to say goodbye, make her purchases and leave; "Laura" had made a good first impression, and she and Jack now had an acquaintance and a shared interest to be built upon later.

But the garage apartment was so empty, and after all, getting to know Jack Bristow was her job.

"Tell you what," she said slowly. "Come listen to the Leon Russell at my apartment. If we don't like it, then we'll have Handel and Prokofiev and Mozart instead."

"Now?"

"Do you have someplace else to go?" Perhaps she'd moved too fast.

But Jack shook his head. "No. I – that sounds nice. Yes."

_Thank goodness the KGB chose a wife for you,_ she thought as they loaded her bike into the trunk of his car. _Otherwise, I don't know how you would have met anyone. _

They agreed that Leon Russell's lyrics were interesting, but neither of them cared for his voice. Only the first song on the album was appealing enough to play more than once. Irina peeled back the tabs on two cans of beer, and they sat on the rickety structure that served as a kind of porch while the speakers sang to them from inside.

Jack's conversation improved as he became more comfortable. He was capable of talking interestingly, which was a relief, and listening closely, which wasn't. At first they talked about school, the weather and events in the news (about which he proved less dogmatic than she had dreaded). But as afternoon became evening, and Water Music replaced Leon, the topics became more personal.

"You must not have wanted to pack much when you moved from Oregon."

He'd noticed the empty apartment – and explained it for her, all at once. "I liked the idea of starting fresh."

"Starting over?"

"More or less." Irina leaned her head back against her screen door. Her beer can was nearly empty, but it still felt cool in her hand.

Jack's feet were on the steps, as though, even relaxing with a can of beer, he longed for the formality of a chair. "You sound like somebody who's left something behind." When she raised an eyebrow, he quickly added, "I don't mean to pry."

"Yes, you do."

"All right. I do." He did smile then; Jack had a nice smile, as it turned out. "But you can tell me to drop it, if you like."

"I didn't leave anything behind." Offering up this cover story would be tricky, but fortunately Jack had set her up for it perfectly. She tilted the can back, swallowing the last of her beer, before adding, "I lost my family last year, in a car accident. Everyone."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have –"

"You didn't know."

"I'm sorry," Jack repeated, and this time he was expressing sympathy, not embarrassment. He'd accepted the story easily; she ought to have felt relief, but didn't.

"I don't have any pictures. I can't have any pictures. Looking at them would hurt too much." Irina remembered the photographs Gerard had taken with him, the one image she'd stolen for herself, and to her horror, tears pricked at her eyes.

But Jack touched her shoulder, and both his gentleness and her success soothed her. "I understand. I don't have any family either."

The personnel files had given her the dates: mother dead when Bristow was 6, father dead when Bristow was 11, a foster situation with a distant relative until he struck out on his own at 16. It would be better to learn the story behind the facts. "Can I ask what happened?"

"It was a long time ago." He didn't open up easily. _Good,_ Irina decided. She liked a challenge.

"It's still new to me. Feeling so alone."

That was his cue to move closer and offer comfort. Instead, Jack sat quietly, considering what she'd said. After another sip of beer, he said, "I've been on my own for a few years now. I don't remember what it was like – when that feeling was new."

So, he wanted to be the one comforted. Irina could do that. "You must have been very lonely." But she was wrong again.

"No. Not for a long time now." He was watching the road with the same distant stare some people gave the horizon. "I've been able to shape my own life. It's – not what most people would choose – not the way I would have chosen for it to happen – but it has its benefits." When Jack turned back, Irina was surprised to see that he was once again wholly focused on her. "I don't mean to – make light of what you're going through –"

"I see that. It's all right." Irina considered this, not as a window into Jack's character, but as insight into her own situation. She was creating Laura Miles, wasn't she? Shaping a life? In some ways, Laura's life belonged to her even more than her own life did – an unwelcome revelation she quickly pushed aside. "I need something like that to concentrate on."

"Shaping your life?"

"Not letting anyone else shape it for me."

And that cut too close. Breathing in deeply, Irina tried to dwell purely in the moment: the scent of new-mown grass, the reddening of the western sky and Jack. He was better looking than she'd thought at first.

"If you need any help – I don't know, somebody to – fix things or – whatever you might need." He was offering the services of a father, or a brother. If he'd been any less patently hopeful, Irina would have thought he was letting her down gently. Irina smiled a little, but perhaps her expression looked wrong, because Jack quickly added, "No strings attached. I'm not offering only to – as a way of asking you out or anything. If you just need a friend. That's – that would be good."

She folded her arms across her knees and looked up at him through half-lowered lids. "Then how are you going to ask me out?"

Jack half-turned his head from her as he smiled, bashful and happy all at once. Irina laughed out loud, and he didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

With more social finesse than she'd thought he possessed, he talked around the subject for a while; she did too, until it became flirting. As time went on, her sorrows about her family lifted. Somehow, despite the fact that she could not think of Jack as a cheerful person, he managed to cheer her up. Her troubles seemed distant; her path seemed clear.

An hour later, Jack left. Irina walked him halfway to the car. After he said goodbye, she kissed him on the cheek, then went inside without looking back. She liked Jack, Irina decided. That would make things easier. And it was comforting, spending time with someone she liked, but someone who no longer mattered to her the moment he'd walked out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**September 2003**

_Amsterdam, the Netherlands_

 

Jack went to Amsterdam without giving Irina specific instructions how to find him; he assumed she wouldn't need them. When she fell into step beside him on the street, it seemed simple – as though she'd been with him the whole time. Rather than acknowledge her, Jack looked down at the nearby canal; the reflections of their faces rippled on the brackish water.

"I think you're clear," she said.

He didn't need Irina Derevko to perform his surveillance. "I am. My flight out isn't until tonight, so we have time to talk."

A sidelong glance revealed that Irina was wearing blue jeans and a thick sweater, with a battered leather satchel slung across one shoulder. From a distance, she probably still looked like a college student, out for an adventure. Jack knew that he looked middle-aged and staid – but he also knew that very few people would look at him at all. Invisibility was his gift, not Irina's.

She'd lost weight. Jack knew he had too.

**

In his hotel room, Irina set up her laptop and showed him various images: Rambaldi's notebooks, mostly. Jack wondered how it was possible to hate the sight of one man's handwriting so much.

"You're no doubt aware that McKenas Cole was released as part of the undercover American negotiations with Pakistan last year." She was looking at the screen, not at him. "He had friends there – Covenant connections. I can't be certain, but I suspect he has a position of power within the organization."

Jack loosened his tie, but it didn't help; the room was still stifling, warm and close, with stale air that seemed to have been shut up for months. "Cole had a personal grudge against Sydney."

"I didn't know that."

"When you sent him into SD-6?"

Irina faced him then. "I trusted you to get her out of there."

"You thought she'd go and leave her friends behind? Then you never knew our daughter very well." The rebuke carried more weight now than it would have before – too much. He breathed out slowly. "I'm sorry."

She ignored both jibe and apology. "Cole could hold a grudge very well, but I doubt the Covenant would have moved on that alone. They would have acted because of Sydney's role in the Rambaldi prophecies. We'll have to determine what specific intel they were following –"

"No, we don't. We need to know where the Covenant's leadership is, and we need to eliminate them immediately. Their motives are irrelevant."

"You don't care why our daughter died?"

"I won't let you turn her murder into another excuse for you to chase your obsessions."

The slap of her palm against his face was surprising only because it wasn't a fist. Jack seized her arm, fingers digging into flesh, and in that moment he could have snapped the bone. But then he took a breath and let go. Irina considered him coolly as he worked his jaw from side to side, rubbing his stinging skin. "If you don't believe that I want justice for Sydney," she said, "then I'll do this on my own."

"I believe you." It was the only answer that would get him closer to the truth. He hadn't convinced her – that was obvious – but she didn't press the point.

For the next hour, she walked him through what little information she had about the Covenant: likely contacts, past whereabouts, potential strikes. Jack knew he would help Irina steal Rambaldi artifacts as part of her plan, supposedly only to draw the Covenant out. However, he didn't doubt that Irina would walk away with her prize at the end.

Then again, did it matter? Why shouldn't Rambaldi's power belong to Irina instead of Sydney's killers? Perhaps he only envied her the ability to still want something – to have a reason to wake up in the morning, even in a world without Sydney in it.

**

In the two weeks that passed before their next meeting in Prague, Jack found himself regretting his words. Not his doubt about Irina's motivations – he wasn't at all sure he was wrong, and he didn't mind Irina knowing it.

But telling Irina that she hadn't known Sydney very well – he shouldn't have said that. Jack hadn't known Sydney well enough himself, and he realized how much that lack could hurt.

Why he cared about having hurt Irina was another question entirely, one he was too tired to ask.

Ironically, now that he finally had a definite path to follow, Jack found some of his resolve slipping. The one Scotch a night had become two – sometimes three, if he wasn't working the next day. He let himself look at Sydney's pictures, including the ones when she was a baby, the ones with Irina's hands or feet in the corners of the frame. One night, he even opened up the cedar chest in his attic; the sight of the lacy christening gown, small enough to fit in his hands, nearly unmanned him.

When he caught sight of a bundle tied with red ribbon faded almost to pink, Jack realized what he'd found – and what he should do with it. Would Irina welcome the gift, or would it devastate her?

He decided he didn't care. What he had found represented Irina's grief, not his own; it was only fair that that she should have it. No point in carrying the burden, when he already had more weight than he could bear.

**

"What are these?"

Jack slipped on his coat to leave instead of answering. He watched Irina's eyes widen as she turned over the bundle of letters and saw them addressed, in a child's scrawl, _"Mommy." _

"Sydney wrote them to you, after you – were gone. Sometimes she asked me to write too, but –" Jack shrugged. "I let her write. I kept the letters in the cedar chest."

"With her baby things. You still have her –" Irina swallowed hard. Jack knew the terrible vulnerability in Irina's face well by then; for the first time, he believed it. "Thank you."

Already tired of Prague, Irina, the hotel room, Jack went for the door. But she lifted her head, meeting his eyes. He had never been able to decline her challenges.

"If you aren't with me when I read them, you'll never know what they say."

"I've had them for twenty-five years without reading them."

She looked smaller, somehow, in her simple black suit, sitting alone on the couch. "It's different now."

Was it? Already he regretted having giving away anything of Sydney's, any part of her, even if it was Irina's by right. So he hung up his coat, poured them each a brandy, and sat on the sofa by Irina's side.

She drank deeply, set the glass down and began opening the letter on top. "Are they in order?"

"No idea."

But they seemed to be; certainly the first letter couldn't have been written by a child much older than 6. Jack imagined Sydney's tiny hand gripping a fat pencil, painstakingly tracing every word:

_Dear Mommy, I miss you since you went to heaven. I know heaven is a good place and I will see you again somday but I miss you all the time. Daddy tries to act like he is not sad but he is sad too and I can't make him happy. I am lonly and I wish I could talk to you._

I am glad you were my Mommy –

Jack turned his head from the thing. No word the adult Sydney spoke to him in anger ever hurt him like seeing his little girl's heartbreak and knowing how he failed her.

Irina made a half-swallowed sound, almost too soft to hear. Jack turned back toward her and saw the way her hand shook as she held the paper. Tears welled in her eyes, and though she knew he was watching, Irina made no effort to check them. He had not been the only one to fail Sydney.

Their daughter deserved so much better than her parents.

He took the letter from Irina, then awkwardly folded her head against his chest. When her arms snaked around him, her fingers tense against his back, Jack pulled her closer. She began to cry – noisy, racking sobs without any dignity or restraint. As his throat tightened, Jack struggled not to join her; he'd only let himself cry once, in the hour after he'd seen the final DNA test results, and he had been sure to be alone. But the tears came anyway.

They clung to one another like survivors of a shipwreck, shaky and weak, uncertain whether they would ever see light. Irina gained her composure before he did, but she did not lift her head to look at him. Grateful for the small measure of privacy, Jack worked to steady his breathing. The shame he had expected to feel never materialized – his grief was her grief, and therefore impossible to hide.

When at last he was himself again, Irina said, "We won't survive this."

Jack nodded. "Good." He knew she agreed.

Together, they worked their way through the letters, reading into the night. Sydney's handwriting grew neater, her spelling better, her longing for her mother ever sharper. Sometimes she wrote about hating her father's coldness and distance; sometimes she wrote about how badly she wished for him to reach out to her, just once. Jack couldn't have said which was worse.

At least he remembered Sydney writing these letters, the familiar turn of the key in the cedar chest's lock. Irina didn't even have that.

By 2 a.m. they were lying on the hotel bed, each rereading letters they'd looked at before. Sydney's words surrounded them. Folded paper lay on the floor, on the pillows, on the bedside table. It was a measure of how completely their daughter possessed them that Jack felt no uneasiness about lying so close to Irina. They might have been husband and wife once more, on the bed they'd shared for a decade.

Her body was probably as dead to desire as his was.

Exhaustion tugged at him, and Jack didn't bother fighting it. Normally, he wouldn't have allowed himself to doze off in the presence of an enemy – but this enemy was an ally, too. He knew he'd live through the night; as long as Irina needed something from him, she wouldn't do him any favors.

**

Jack awoke in darkness. For one instant, he didn't remember when or where he was; the room was unfamiliar, but in his work that was common. Paper crinkled when he adjusted his weight, and he remembered: the letters, Irina, and Sydney –

Irina groaned. She lay next to him, the curve of her side just visible in the night. "What time is it?"

He ignored the question. Slowly he brought a hand to his face and pressed down on his eyelids, hard enough to see red. If he could blot out the world, perhaps he could blot out memory.

"Jack?"

"Waking up," he said. "I hate waking up."

She shifted on the mattress, though he couldn't have guessed if she came closer or moved further away.

"When I wake up, for the first few seconds – I don't remember. I don't know that Sydney's gone. But then it comes back, and it's like finding out all over again. It always happens. Always."

Her thumb and forefinger gripped his jaw, hard. Then Irina's mouth closed over his.

Jack hesitated for only an instant. He returned the kiss, matching her fierceness, feeling her teeth against his lips and tongue, and when he rolled her onto her back, she moved with him. Irina's fingernails dug into his arms through the shirt he still wore; Jack tugged at her skirt, then simply shoved it up to her waist. Together, without a word, they pulled at their clothes, not even attempting to give each other any pleasure. This was about oblivion, nothing else.

When he slipped two fingers into her, she was already wet. Jack wondered if her body's response was as surprising to her as his own was to him. He didn't intend to ask.

Her hand closed around the base of his cock, guiding him in. Warmth and darkness surrounded him, and then he felt Irina's hands on either side of his head, her fingers threading through his hair. His forehead was pressed against her cheek, their clothing crumpled into ridges beneath his chest and ribs. "Harder," she said, nothing else, and he knew she was asking to forget. He tried to make her forget.

Irina tilted her hips, the angle familiar from the distant past. Then he didn't have to think any longer; all he had to do was move.

His orgasm wasn't a release, just an ending, scarcely recognizable as pleasure. Jack gasped once, then gripped Irina's shoulders as the shudder passed through him. Her hands brushed against his cheeks, the closest either of them had come to a caress since their lovemaking began.

Their eyes met in the darkness. He could feel her breath against his throat, the tension still in her body. But when he stroked his hand along her inner thigh, Irina shook her head.

"I want to do this for you," he murmured. Jack didn't want to owe Irina for anything, not even this momentary escape.

"I know. But it's not – it doesn't matter."

Already the sadness was settling on him again. No, it didn't matter.

He rolled away from Irina, and for a long time they lay next to each other without speaking. Their breathing slowed, and Jack's heartbeat dropped back to normal. It occurred to him that he was still wearing his tie, which seemed too pathetic to be funny.

When dawn began to outline the curtains in light, Jack readjusted his clothes and got out of the bed. He stepped on one of Sydney's letters, and pulled his foot back quickly, before he could crease the paper.

Irina said nothing and made no move to stop him. Jack didn't turn to face her until he was ready to go.

"I'll track down the bank accounts you gave me." If she found it absurd to be spoken to so officially while she still lay in the rumpled bed where they'd made love, Irina gave no sign. He continued, "I should be able to follow the trail for a while. That should free you up to follow other leads."

"Three weeks, then. In Beijing." Irina said this as though it were a settled plan, not the first Jack had heard of it.

"Beijing." Next time, there would be no letters, no crying, no loss of control. What had happened here was just a mistake, one of so many that it would soon be lost in the debris.

But in Beijing, they went to bed once more, as desperately and joylessly as before. Jack didn't resist the pull, and knew he never would again. If it felt like betrayal, allowing himself to erase Sydney's memory for a time, it wouldn't be the first time he'd abandoned his daughter. There was some comfort in knowing that at least this was the last.

**

**October 1970**

_Hampton, Virginia_

 

The day was overcast, and not as warm as they'd expected, but they'd driven down to Chesapeake Bay anyway. No lines awaited them at the restaurants and shops, and when they walked along the shore, they seemed to have everything to themselves: the cloud-scudded sky, the choppy water, the wind that whipped through their hair.

"I'd find it difficult," she said, "working and going to college at the same time."

"It is difficult. But I manage. It's just a matter of priorities."

"When you speak like that –"

"Like what?"

Irina considered her choice of words carefully. "Lightly. When you speak lightly, I think you're not being entirely honest."

Jack half-smiled at her, the wind ruffling his dark curls. "I've heard that before."

He knew his tells, but he had failed to watch them with her. Either he was underestimating her, or he very much wanted not to lie to her. Irina liked both possibilities, but she liked the second one more.

"What exactly is it that you do?"

"Government work."

"That much you told me. But that could be anything." She laughed and tried to smooth the flapping skirt of her sundress. "You could be a postman."

This was Jack's cue to either go along with the joke or present her with his CIA-approved cover story. Instead, he looked out to the water, squinting against the gusts coming in with the surf, and she felt her heartbeat quicken strangely. It was as if she were really about to learn a secret.

"I can't really talk about it," he finally said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

His glare suggested that she'd annoyed him for the first time. "We've played chess. I know that you're smart enough to realize what that means. What I don't know is why you're pretending you're not."

Irina went with her instinctive reaction, anger; when presented with a real threat, it was often the safest move. "Don't be rude. You caught me off guard, that's all."

Jack hesitated, then ducked his head. Perhaps that was his idea of an apology.

Gerard and her team at the KGB had all proclaimed that Jack Bristow would probably never acknowledge his role as a CIA agent to her, and that if he did, it would be very late in the relationship. This was only their fourth date. Irina knew that Gerard would crow over this news and call Jack a fool, but she already knew her mark well enough to understand that wasn't the case. Jack understood that he was taking a risk, but he was taking it anyway.

Gulls screeched nearby, flapping their wings unevenly as they navigated the strong winds. "The weather's picking up," Jack said, folding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Maybe we should go back."

"Not yet."

Their eyes met, and Irina was surprised to see that he was willing to stay and talk.

They fell into step, side by side. She began, "You're very young for – for that."

"You'd be surprised."

The KGB had come to her when she was 17. "Is it dangerous?"

"Laura –"

"Forget I asked." She shouldn't press her luck, trying for too much too soon. Better to try and think of what a girl in her position might say, if she really were learning all of this for the first time. "That's why you're gone so often."

"Yes." His hand sought hers, and sand gritted between their palms. "I'd see you more, if I could. I've wanted you to know that. I know I've canceled – too many times -- "

"Just twice." They'd only known each other for a month.

"Once is too many."

That sounded encouraging; she gave him a sidelong smile as his reward. "You'd spend more time with me?"

As an answer, Jack lifted her hand to his mouth. His lips were soft against her knuckles, and Irina swayed slightly closer to him.

_("At times, you may feel desire for him. He is young, not unattractive – it would only be natural. You should anticipate this response, so that you can deny it.")_

She squeezed his fingers, then let go, walking a few steps ahead. Jack, probably believing she was still trying to process his revelation, let her go without hurrying to catch up. Her hand felt strangely empty.

"Don't you ever resent it?" Irina had to speak loudly for her voice to carry over the wind. "The time they take from you?"

"I never did before."

At that, she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. Jack caught up, slipped his arms around her waist and leaned his forehead against hers. Her hair blew past their faces, as if cocooning them away from the rest of the world. "But now?" she whispered.

Jack heard her, despite the wind. "Now I have somebody I don't want to leave behind."

Irina tilted her chin forward just enough for their lips to touch. As they kissed, she ignored everything – the stinging ocean spray against her calves, the chilly breeze, the memory of her instructors' words. Jack's curly hair was soft against her hands.

When their mouths parted, she said, "Are you sorry you told me?"

"No." Then he frowned, and she wondered if she had summoned his regret by asking for it. But Jack was looking at the horizon. "It doesn't look good out there." Irina turned her head and saw the dark clouds far out to sea.

**

They got to Jack's blue Oldsmobile before the rain started, but within thirty minutes of leaving town the water was washing across the roads. Every station on the radio dial proclaimed that a tropical storm, thought to be headed south toward the Carolinas, had shifted north instead. They were only on the fringes of it, but as the trees bent overhead, branches whipping leaves down like part of the storm, Irina was grateful they were no closer. By the time Jack suggested they shouldn't try to drive through it, she was more than willing to agree.

"You kids are lucky," said the woman at the hotel counter, squinting at them through cat-eyed glasses that must have been twenty years old. "I've only got two rooms left." Jack nodded, obviously ready to accept them at any price.

_("Under no circumstances should you initiate the sexual relationship, nor should you allow him to initiate it until a few months have passed. He cannot suspect seduction in any way, and he will prize you more if he believes he has had to win you.")_

Irina brushed her damp hair away from her forehead. "One room is fine."

Jack's eyes met hers for only a second, sending electricity crackling through her. The counter clerk was obviously peeking at their ringless hands, but she pushed the register forward without protest. After a moment's hesitation, Jack signed them in.

Once they had the key, they walked upstairs without saying a word, without even touching. But Irina knew he was as aware of her as she was of him; they were breathing at the same rate, in and out, already in synch. The room and bed seemed small to her – she who had slept on a cot in her parents' room until she was 15 -- and she wondered how much America had already changed her thinking.

Wind shuddered against the panes, and Jack went to pull the curtains shut. Irina was relieved not to have to see the storm any longer, though it still sounded so close.

Her sundress was drenched, and she made a mournful sound as she stepped out of her waterlogged sandals. Watching her, Jack said, "Do you want to – shower, or –"

His voice trailed off, stumbling over his accidental innuendo. How experienced was he? Irina knew he wasn't the novice she took him for at first – his kisses told her that much – but he wasn't smooth enough to easily navigate an unexpected trip to a hotel room with a girl.

Then their eyes met again, and she thought perhaps it wasn't about being in a hotel room with a girl at all. It was about being with her.

"No. I'll just – I'll be right out." Irina stepped into the bathroom and quickly toweled her hair mostly dry. Her eyes seemed unfamiliar in the mirror. The wet sundress was hung over the shower curtain with her bra and panties; they probably wouldn't be dry until morning.

Irina's first inclination was to walk out of the bathroom naked – she wasn't much for coyness – but perhaps with her invitation, she'd been brazen enough for one day. She wrapped the cheap motel towel around her and stepped out of the bathroom. Jack was standing by the bed, still fully dressed – no, Irina saw, he'd taken off his socks and shoes. For some reason, that uncertain gesture moved her; long after this assignment was over, Irina thought, she would remember how he looked standing there in his rain-spotted clothing, his socks drying a few steps away.

At the sight of her, he breathed out sharply, like a man who'd been struck. For a moment Irina wondered if he would be able to speak – he seemed so awed, so overcome by it all. Her own heart beat too strongly within her chest, and, absurdly, she almost felt shy. But then Jack took her face in his hands and kissed her as gently as he had at the beach. The warmth kindling inside her spread, reaching down into her bones, out to her skin. She opened her mouth beneath his, as if in surrender.

_("You shouldn't be sexually aggressive even when the affair has begun. Let him lead the way – react to his likes and dislikes. Be submissive. Most men will prefer that.") _

Irina tugged Jack's shirt open, fingers trembling. He only kissed her harder. When Jack pushed her towel away, she gave him a few seconds to take a long look, then pressed her body to his, skin on skin. His bare chest was warm. His arms. His mouth. So warm –

He had a good body, and Irina didn't try to hide her excitement; instead, she ran her hands over him, back and belly, cock and thighs. Jack's fingers slipped between her legs, just a few soft strokes – but enough to tell her he was no novice at all.

They turned back the bedspread, lay uncovered on the expanse of white sheets. His tongue painted heat against her collarbone, on her nipples, in the space between her breasts. Irina asked for what she wanted, and he gave it to her, eager to answer her desire. She had been right to follow her own instincts. Everything about this was right.

And then Jack was on top of her, pushing inside her, his eyes shut, as if lost in sensation. Irina savored the slow burn of it, cradling him between her thighs, letting him get in so deep it almost hurt – a near-pain that awakened every nerve ending and made her sweat. And yet, even as she neared the brink, she knew there was something else that she wanted.

"Wait," she whispered, easing him onto his back so that she straddled him. "Now –"

_("Feign your response. You cannot afford to let him know what causes you pleasure. Your mind will remain clear if the sexual relationship remains unsatisfying.") _

"Yes," Jack whispered, thrusting up into her, matching the spiraling motion of her body. Gasping, Irina let her head fall back and rode him in the rhythm she craved. He gripped her just beneath the rib cage, watching her with a heat that was almost as exhilarating as his touch. When her climax took her, she cried out, not hiding her response. Through the blur of orgasm, she felt Jack tense beneath her, heard the catch in his throat as he came.

Afterward, he pulled the covers over her and pulled her close, so that she nestled against his chest. Jack brushed her hair away from her face, caressed her hand, stroked the outer curve of one of her breasts – it was as if he had to keep convincing himself that she was real, that it had all happened. Her body seemed to hum beneath his touch.

"I'm in love with you." His breath was soft against her temple. "I don't think I've ever been in love with anyone. Not like this."

"I know. I understand." For the first time, it felt odd to lie to him. "I love you too."

He embraced her more tightly, and Irina genuinely pitied Jack then. Maybe it wasn't professional to pity your mark. But she wanted to give him something, and that was all she had to give.


	3. Chapter 3

**December 2003**

_Bali, Indonesia_

 

"Debate, for two years. Drama for three. Track team, swim team – basketball, too, but only for one year."

"She didn't like basketball?"

"She hated taking the bus to and from all the games. And I wasn't there to drive her."

Jack lay naked beside Irina in bed, looking not at her but at the ceiling. A bamboo-bladed fan spun slowly around and, to his weary, jet-lagged mind, seemed strangely mesmerizing.

Their meetings had fallen into a particular cadence: strategy, sex, sleep, talking, leaving. The talking was by far the most difficult to navigate. Irina's thirst to hear more about Sydney never abated, and Jack tried to answer her. He had always heard that speaking about grief made it easier to bear; this was his first test of that theory, and so far, he thought it wasn't being borne out. But when he was lying next to Irina first thing in the morning, Jack found he could endure the memories by sharing them.

"Anything else? Was she a cheerleader?"

"No. Sydney wanted to be on the field, not the sidelines." He half-smiled at the ceiling fan. "She and Francie used to make fun of the cheerleaders. They had this – routine they did – God, what were the names? " Irina rolled onto her side and propped up on an elbow, studying him. He noticed the way her hair fell across her shoulder, dark and shining against the orange-pink sheets. Then it came to him: "Mindy and Cindy. That was it. They'd pretend to be these silly cheerleaders and bounce all around the house."

"And did they make you laugh?"

"Once or twice." Though he'd slept for seven hours by Irina's side, Jack already felt tired again. "Usually I told them to be quiet. I had work to do."

Irina's mouth tightened, but then she touched his shoulder with one forefinger, just a tap. "I remember one time I came into our room and found Sydney in my makeup case. She'd smeared lipstick and eyeshadow on her face, the floor, her dress, the curtains – every surface she could find. I was so angry, and I called her a bad girl, and I put her in her room while she cried. Over some ruined makeup. There are whole months with her I can't remember, but I could repeat every word I shouted at her then."

"It's all right." Jack caught her fingers in his, not quite a caress; after the nights they'd spent together, such a touch was no longer unthinkable. "Every parent gets angry."

Her thumb brushed against his palm. "And you really did have work to do."

"It doesn't matter now."

"No, it doesn't."

They were silent for a while after this, listening to nothing but the humming of the fan. Irina rolled onto her belly, a few inches closer to him. Jack studied the long curve of her spine and the way the bright sheet crumpled right at the small of her back. This safe house of Irina's was near the water, and the reflected light that played across the ceiling seemed to ripple with the tide.

Déjà vu coalesced into memory when he glanced at the window with its low sill. "This reminds me of the apartment in Falls Church."

She put her hands under her chin, one eyebrow arched. "Which part? The beach? The grass mats on the floor?"

"The sarcasm is unnecessary." Jack gestured toward the light. "Look at the window."

After a few moments, she said, "You're right. The way the pool used to reflect the light up into our bedroom – it was like this. I never realized before."

"All we need is Shelley sitting on the windowsill."

"Oh." Irina turned to him then, a gentler smile on her face than he'd seen since she called herself Laura. "Shelley. I'd almost forgotten."

"So had I." Then his internal clock – unshakable by shifts in time zones or hemispheres – brought him back to the present. "I have to go."

Irina waved him toward the shower; they said nothing to one another as he went into the bathroom and attempted to coax hot water out of the antiquated plumbing. Jack felt curiously unfocused, but he found it difficult to determine why. Instead of mapping out the circuitous route he would take home – across half of Asia before he boarded a plane again – his attention was drawn to odd, immediate details: the heat of the water spattering down on him, the uneven tiles beneath his feet, even the slip of the yellow soap within his hands. Ducking his head beneath the nozzle, Jack felt the moisture sink into his hair, into his scalp. He was hungry, suddenly overcome with a craving for the kind of breakfast he hadn't had in years: eggs and sausage and coffee, as much as he could eat.

When he realized he was lingering, Jack pulled himself together and got out of the shower; Irina, naked and utterly unconcerned, ducked past him before he could turn off the water. "I packed your things," she said as she pulled the shower curtain between them. "I'll see you in Cairo next month."

"Next month," he replied to the shower curtain.

They had never told one another goodbye before, so why was he waiting now? Jack shrugged off the impulse and got dressed: linen shirt and khaki pants, almost the only bearable wardrobe for Bali's heat. As she'd said, Irina had packed his bag and done a thorough job. She had done this before missions, sometimes; without even looking, Jack knew where he would find his socks, his hairbrush, even his underwear.

_Old habits die hard,_ he thought. For some reason, this seemed to be a good enough reason to step back into the bathroom. "Irina?"

"What is it?" She pulled the shower curtain back; her hair was slicked against her scalp. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I just – I wanted to say goodbye."

"Oh." They stared at each other for a moment, just long enough for him to begin to feel awkward, before she smiled. "Goodbye."

In the sliver of the open shower curtain, he could glimpse rivulets of water streaming down her leg. Jack brushed her cheek with one hand, then kissed her, quickly, almost as an afterthought.

Then he kissed her again. Then their lips met once more, and he thought this time, Irina had kissed him.

The warm water from her palm soaked through the arm of his shirt; his hand found the curve of bone between waist and hip, stroked the damp skin there. Jack felt himself slowly hardening for her, awakening to a different kind of desire than he'd known in a very long time.

After their mouths parted, Irina whispered, "Isn't your train at nine o'clock?"

"There's another one at ten."

"Good."

He dried her hair with the towel as she unbuttoned his shirt; they stumbled back toward the bed, taking their time, kissing each other long and deep. Jack laid her out on the bed and had to stare at her for a long moment before he lowered himself over her and began sucking gently at her breasts. When they were kids, sometimes she could get off just from that, just from his mouth on her nipples, and the memory excited him almost as much as the reality had.

Irina's hands caressed him, awakening his skin to sensation – down his back, against his sides, around his cock – and then she was grabbing at the orange-pink sheets, as if grasping for control of herself. Not yet, Jack thought, and he slid down to kneel at the foot of the bed, between her thighs.

He had done this for her just the previous night – but that had been quick and desperate, just a way of getting her off as part of a mutual transaction. Jack hadn't taken his time, breathing in the scent of her, tasting her, as he did now.

The muscles of Irina's belly tightened beneath his hands, and Jack heard her start to breathe through her teeth – a long-remembered sign. His tongue swirled against her, the tease he knew she liked; he could bring her close, let her go, bring her close again. When she tensed and cried out, he slid his hands upward to feel her nipples taut against his palms.

She kissed him, slipping her tongue between his lips, as he rejoined her on the bed. Irina had always liked that, he remembered; she always wanted to taste herself on his mouth after she came. He had once thought it was a kind of claim on him.

Silently they negotiated their position, Irina sliding one thigh across his hipbone as they brought their bodies together, side by side. Jack gripped her hard, keeping her close, making sure they moved together at just the right pace. This way, he could still see her – it seemed important to look at her, undulating with him in the reflected light from the ocean.

"Faster," Irina whispered against his cheek.

"Mmm. No." He dropped an uneven kiss on her forehead, still moving. "Over too soon."

"Faster. I'm close –"

"Not yet. Soon. Promise."

She laughed, either in frustration or enjoyment. Probably both. Jack smiled back at her, wondering through the haze of sex how long it had been since he'd smiled at anyone in bed.

At last he went faster, hanging onto his control until Irina came, shouting without any shame. Jack's own climax blinded him to the world, then brought him back into warmth and light and Irina's arms, holding him tightly in a sea of orange-pink.

Afterward they lay together in silence, his head pillowed on her breast. Jack enjoyed this until the moment it occurred to him to wonder what the hell he had just done.

When he sat up, Irina pulled the sheet over her in a display of modesty that would have been absurd if he hadn't been feeling exposed himself. His khakis were easy enough to find, but the shirt took almost a minute. Neither of them spoke until he was dressed again, his bag in his hand.

"Cairo," Irina said, as though giving an order. Her hair had half-dried in a very strange configuration. She let the sheet drop, but only to stalk past him into the bathroom.

"Cairo," Jack repeated as the door shut between them. He started walking and didn't pause until he reached the train station.

**

"I know you're not a big believer in the counseling process." Dr. Barnett's hands were folded in her lap, a decorous gesture at odds with her questioning. "But given the extremity of the loss you've suffered, I don't think your superiors are wrong in thinking that it would do you good to talk."

He talked to Irina – had talked to Irina. Jack wasn't sure that particular outlet would be available to him any longer. "Nobody has raised any issues with my performance – at least, not to me."

Dr. Barnett held up her hands. "Nobody's questioning your ability or your judgment."

"Then why have I been ordered to see you?"

"Isn't it possible that some people here might genuinely be concerned about your well-being?"

"No."

She made a notation on her legal pad.

Jack thought that the last week alone might have been enough for other agents to begin questioning him. Since Bali, he'd been needlessly argumentative and unable to stop himself; he'd drunk enough at night to be hung over two days this week. He thought he'd hidden the aftereffects well enough, but perhaps he'd been wrong.

"I reviewed your medical records," Dr. Barnett said. "S.O.P. You've lost almost twenty pounds in the past six months."

"I haven't felt much like eating since my daughter's death."

"You have to take care of yourself."

"Why is that, Dr. Barnett? Why, precisely, should that be a goal of mine?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Jack – if you're having suicidal thoughts –"

"I'm not." For the past week, he'd been hungry for three meals a day; he hadn't eaten dinner either of the nights he got drunk, but not because of apathy. Instead, he had perversely resisted the urge. "But working in the CIA means accepting your own expendability. I've never found it comforting or useful to pretend otherwise."

Dr. Barnett put the notepad down. Something in her expression reminded Jack that – not so long ago – he had trusted her. "I think you find it comforting to pretend that you don't deserve anything more than mere survival. When is the last time you did anything enjoyable for yourself? Anything that made you happy?"

This was his cue to deny that he could be happy in a world without Sydney in it. Although this was the truth, Dr. Barnett would call it a lie, and they would be locked in a debate that might require many sessions of counseling before she would let it drop. Jack decided to try a different route. "Last week."

"And what did you do?"

"I went to bed with a woman."

"Oh." He'd surprised her, which was more than worth the minor embarrassment. "Well. Okay. Can I ask who that was?"

"I'd worked with her previously on various CIA missions. She'd given us useful intel in the past. I went to discuss an ongoing investigation. Afterward I spent the night." Partial truths were better than the most carefully constructed lies.

"Was that a new relationship?"

"We'd slept together before, if that's what you're asking."

Dr. Barnett cocked her head. "Does she know about Sydney?"

Jack hadn't anticipated that question. "I don't see how that's relevant." She just kept studying him with her curiously birdlike gaze. "Yes. She does."

"Did you talk with this woman about your daughter last week?" Jack nodded shortly. "Before or after you went to bed together?"

He gave her the full force of his glare. "Would you like me to draw some diagrams of the evening? A Power Point presentation could be arranged."

"I'm not asking about your sex life. I'm asking about your emotional life. You're the only one who knows where those converge."

Already Jack regretted taking their conversation down this particular road. "Both before and after."

Dr. Barnett smiled, as if approving, and he felt his hands curling into fists at his side. "You've let her in. I'm glad, Jack. The fact that you've reached out for some emotional support – "

"Sydney is gone." It took all his remaining self-control to keep his voice lower than a shout. "Everything else is – noise."

When their hour was up, Dr. Barnett suggested that he come in again next week. Jack explained that he would be in Cairo.

**

_Cairo, Egypt_

 

Irina was almost an hour late, which meant that by the time she arrived at the café where he waited, he was hot, sweaty and equal parts worried and pissed off. She was wearing a blonde wig, fussy and over-fixed, that added ten years to her face. "Sorry I'm late." Her attention was mostly devoted to her clutch bag, in which she was fishing around for something, God only knew what. She had chosen a kind of persona guaranteed to irritate him. "Lost all track of the time."

He could think of nothing to say in reply. Their eyes met, and she smiled at him, maddeningly smug, as though she had gained the advantage.

She meant to keep him at a distance. It was his decision whether or not to let her.

Jack took Irina's wrist in his hand, the bangle bracelet cool against his palm, and pulled her down to him. They kissed for so long that he heard a few men at the next table chuckle knowingly.

Finally she took her place across the table from him. Her lipstick was smeared, and Jack wondered if he looked ridiculous as he wiped the bank of his hand across his mouth. Irina, still oddly defiant, said, "Miss me?"

"Yes." It was easier to say than he'd thought.

He was already in freefall. Trying to slow his descent would only have been a kind of lying, and there was a certain exhilaration in knowing that at least Irina was falling with him. Irina could hurt him no longer; after Sydney's death, he was beyond pain. Irina could take nothing from him; Sydney had been taken from him, and nothing else mattered. So it was safe to desire Irina, need her, even love her. It was safe because neither of them had anything left to lose.

Irina could no longer meet his eyes, but she answered him quietly. "I missed you too."

**

**April 1971**

_Washington, D.C. _

 

At this point, the sexual relationship with Bristow has lasted for seven months. He appears to be fully emotionally engaged in the affair and shows no sign that he suspects anything.

"What do you think?"

"I'm not sure a tinsel crown is the best look for you."

"You have no Christmas spirit." Irina's only previous celebrations of Christmas had been some prayers Dadushka had taught her and Elena in secret. But in December 1970, she had a tree in her tiny apartment, presents to and from Jack beneath the tree, and a crown she'd made for herself. Despite Jack's protest, his eyes kept going back to the glittering tinsel, and Irina's smiling face beneath it.

Quietly, he said, "It's been a long time since I spent Christmas with anyone."

"You're not much for holidays, I think."

"No." Jack's fingers brushed against the tinsel. "But I like the way you're –"

"Enjoying myself?"

"Shining," he said, surprising her, before he kissed her soundly.

_Bristow remains extremely reluctant to discuss any details of his past, though it is my opinion that this secrecy is innate to him and not an indication of distrust. He chooses his revelations carefully. The absence of any living family members and the relative lack of close friendships means that he has no outside sources of perspective about the relationship or his own past._

"He did that – in front of you?"

Jack did not answer her immediately, and Irina did not expect it. They lay in his bed, with her spooned around his back; she thought he would find it easier to talk if he didn't have to face her. She had waited a long time to ask him these questions, and she had always meant for them to have this conversation in the dark.

"Sometimes he did. I know I didn't see it all. But I saw enough." After several clicks from the nearby clock – perhaps a minute's worth – Jack continued, "One time, not long before she died, he broke her arm. Mom had lifted up her hand – just to defend herself, not to hit him, though I used to wish she would – well. He grabbed her beneath the wrist and snapped the bones in two."

Irina wanted to hug him more tightly, or to take his hands in hers, but she did not. Pity would repel him. "Where were you?"

"Beneath the kitchen table."

A terrible idea formed, rendering the darkness of Jack's bedroom almost claustrophobic. "Jack – your mother – she didn't die because –"

"No. She had an aneurysm – the aorta, apparently. I remember the doctor explaining to me exactly what the aorta was. He seemed to think it mattered." His hands sought hers, perhaps because he could now think of it as soothing her, instead of comfort for himself. "But I used to wonder. I never stopped wondering – not whether Dad did it, because he didn't, but if he would have. If he'd had the chance."

They lay together in silence; Jack's breathing slowly became regular and even again, and Irina knew that she had comforted him best by saying nothing at all. He felt safer talking into the dark, but at least he wanted her to hear.

"Which one of them do you look like?" Irina said at last.

"I've taken psych. I know what you're really asking." But he didn't tense up.

"And I knew you would know."

"My father. I look like my father."

_He possesses an enormous capacity for violence, but is strongly motivated to control his most violent impulses. Possibly this dichotomy is one of the reasons he was drawn to join the CIA, as the work gives Bristow acceptable outlets for his darker traits while providing a structure to contain them and a political dogma to justify them. In particular, he is repulsed by certain types of violence against women and responds positively to women he sees as strong and capable of protecting themselves – perhaps thinking that they can protect themselves against him, if needed. _

Jack's hands tightened at her waist as he kissed her shoulder, then the back of her neck. "Is this good?"

"Mmmm. Better than good."

He pushed into her again, and Irina sighed happily. She was post-orgasmic and giddy as she glanced to the side to enjoy the sight of them in the mirror of Jack's dresser: both of them standing in his bedroom, herself leaning forward toward the windowsill where she braced her hands, breasts swaying as Jack thrust into her from behind. Every muscle in his body was tensed – Irina liked the view.

Then again, maybe it was worth sacrificing the mirror to try something different.

"Wait, wait." She was out of breath, both from exertion and lightheadedness. "Hold my hands."

"But if I don't keep you steady –"

"C'mon." At her urging, Jack took her hands in his, and Irina bent almost double, so that her hair fell almost to the floor. The angle of his body inside hers changed, and they both shivered. Irina gripped tightly; their palms were warm. "Oh, try it like this."

He went more gently, but the novelty of the sensation and the blood rushing to her head soon had Irina at the brink again, and then past it. As she came, she dug her nails into Jack's wrists; his answering groan could have been pleasure or pain, and at that moment, it didn't seem to matter at all.

Afterward, they lay peacefully atop the bed for a long time, Jack's arms above his head, her feet dangling off the side. "Where did you come up with that?" he said.

"Just thought of it. Seemed like it was worth a try."

"Definitely."

Irina could feel the smile spreading across her face. "Always happy to teach you something new."

"I seem to remember teaching you a thing or two."

"True." Remembering New Year's Eve and their hotel room in New York – especially the big claw-foot tub – Irina's smile only became wider. "Then let's say it's been mutually educational."

Jack kissed her cheek, then her mouth, then bundled her closer to him. Irina returned the embrace, unconcerned with how many rules she was breaking. By now, she was confident in her abilities and determined to enjoy her role's unexpected perks. Before, she had always tried so hard to please Gerard in bed; with Jack, she felt free to explore what pleased her.

Given what had happened in the claw-foot tub, apparently Jack felt that way as well.

_Sexually, Bristow reveals no particular deviancy. This area of his psyche does not lend itself to blackmail or extraordinary psychological manipulation. In my opinion, this subject should no longer be an active area of KGB study. _

Irina held him gently as he fell asleep, waited another ten minutes, then got up and padded into his front room to explore.

The wall safe had been easy to discover; Irina had known where it was for two months, now. However, she had not yet opened it, judging it not worth the risk. After a few minutes of listening to the apartment's silence, she decided against it this time, too. Jack could awaken at any moment. Perhaps she could convince him to let her stay in his apartment sometime when he was gone on a mission; he'd warned her that he would be gone next week, and if she feigned a plumbing problem, or something like that – yes, that would do it.

What few personal papers he had left out in the open revealed little. But Jack's library card showed that he'd been reading up extensively on child psychology – more, Irina suspected, than many child psychology majors ever had. Not all his research on Project Christmas was taking place through the CIA, then. She jotted down the titles quickly, then folded up the slip of paper and tucked it into her purse, still lying on the sofa where she'd dropped it hours ago.

Later Irina could go to the library and read up on the titles herself. Her next report to Gerard would be thorough, scholarly. Perhaps it would convince them to let her accelerate her efforts and start planting listening devices. She was more than ready for her real work to begin.

At last she rejoined Jack in bed, waking him up with kisses, and making love to him again before the sun went down. It was as easy to make him happy as to deceive him.

**

Jack came home from his mission with a black eye and deep cuts along his left side.

"These stitches are horrible." Irina dabbed gently at the gashes with a cloth soaked in hydrogen peroxide; his discarded bandages lay nearby, a mass of red and yellow that would have disgusted most people. The sight of his blood disturbed her more than it should have. "Who sewed you up? A witch doctor?"

"You're not that far off."

"Didn't they take you to a hospital?" He looked up at her through his blue-ringed eye, and Irina sighed. "I know you can't tell me."

"Thanks for doing this." Both of them watched her hands as she worked. "Not just bandages – that too – but not letting this scare you."

"It would take more than this to frighten me off." Irina imagined pointing a gun at the person who had done this to Jack; it had been a year since she'd felt a pistol's kick in her palm, but she could remember the sting well enough. "I'm just relieved that you're back and safe."

Jack half-smiled. "It's good to be home."

"Home" turned out to be her place, not his; Jack lived on the third story of an apartment building with no elevators, and every step made him wince. Irina's apartment was closer to the ground. She insisted that he stay with her, and he put up little resistance.

Living with him proved surprisingly comfortable. Already they had settled into their preferred sides of the bed, certain habits in the morning. Their lovemaking was necessarily curtailed by Jack's injuries, but she discovered that just sleeping by his side was – pleasant.

Being married to Jack Bristow wouldn't be difficult at all, she thought. It might even be fun.

She believed that wholeheartedly until the last day of April, when she came home from class and found him sitting on her bed with a photograph in his hands.

Her bookbag fell too heavily to the floor. Jack was looking at the picture of her with Elena's baby.

"Hi," he said, only half-glancing over his shoulder. "How was Chaucer?"

"Still dead." The old joke was as cold as stone in her mouth. Had he attached no importance to the photo? Was it possible he'd simply put it down, no questions asked?

"I went to the grocery store – picked up a few things. That yogurt you like."

"You shouldn't be lifting anything, Jack."

"I'm getting better. See? I didn't break." Just when she thought he would put the picture aside, Jack held it up to her so that she was confronted with her own smiling face. "I found this in the top cupboard. Odd place for a photo."

"Yes."

He looked at her strangely, and Irina couldn't blame him. She knew that her face was pale; her palms already felt sweaty. But this wasn't a fatal error – it didn't have to be – it hit so close to home, but she could use that, couldn't she?

"Laura? Are you okay?"

"Give me that." Jack handed the photo over, and Irina clasped it to her. The collision between reality and illusion had shaken her, but she let her reaction show; the tears welling in her eyes at last had a purpose.

"Hey. What's wrong? The picture – it's just you and a baby –"

"My niece. This is my niece." She swallowed hard. "Was my niece."

Jack got to his feet, only barely wincing from the movement. "A niece? You never said anything about a – oh, my God."

Yes, he'd made the connection himself, just as she meant for him to. But Irina felt no steadier; instead, the panic and hurt inside her seemed to throb brighter with every heartbeat. "I couldn't tell you about the baby. I couldn't tell you she was in the car – I can talk about the others, but I can't talk about her, not ever."

"It's all right –"

"No, it's not! I'll never see her again, never – I lost her and my parents and my sister, and I keep telling myself that I have a life here, a life that matters – I have you – but nothing ever makes it all right." Irina wiped angrily at her cheeks. Gerard hadn't brought her a letter or photo since December. "I feel like I abandoned them."

Then Jack's arms were around her, and it was safe to lose herself in her own tears.

By the time her sobbing had stopped, they were lying on her bed, Jack curled behind her. Irina held onto his hands, grateful for the warmth and the chance to tell some small fragment of the truth. "I used to think I didn't want children. But when I held her like that – I wanted one of my own so badly it hurt."

She was telling Jack the truth. She couldn't do that – not about something that mattered – and yet even as Irina tried to stop herself, she realized how many other truths she had told him. Little things about sex and music and what she liked for dinner, and she'd told herself each one didn't matter. And yet, all together --

"You were so happy. Holding her." Jack's fingers stroked through her hair. "I don't think I've ever seen you that happy."

"You make me happy." It was true, and in that moment, Irina knew her mission was failing.

Jack went home to his own apartment that night, perhaps sensing that she needed some time to herself. Irina thought he envisioned her crying or listening to her records or simply going to bed early; instead, she ran, two miles, three miles, four. Her path took her through the Mall, past the monuments of the government she had come to wound.

Yes, she cared for Jack. If it was not love – and it was not – it was genuine, and stronger than Irina had ever prepared herself for. That meant that the pain she would inevitably cause him troubled her on levels she hadn't anticipated. But that was all in the future.

It was not guilt that drove her on, sweating and panting, past the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was fear. Because she had come to care for Jack Bristow, he knew something real about her now – something infinitely more important than her name – and Irina could not take that back.

When she got home, she was exhausted enough that her body shook. Instead of standing, she sat on the floor of her shower, letting the water wash over her until her fingers wrinkled. As the water changed from scalding to lukewarm to ice-cold, Irina broke her situation down to facts:

If she could handle her assignment, regain the upper hand in her relationship with Jack, then it was her duty to remain.

If she abandoned this task and went back to Russia in failure, the consequences could be dire – but not so dire as they would be if someone else diagnosed her failure.

That night, as Irina tried to sleep, she kept composing scripts for a potential breakup with Jack Bristow. None of them sounded quite right.

She could handle this. She would. If it was – more complicated – than she'd expected it would be, then perhaps she just had to be that much better to see it through. Irina had always liked a challenge.

**

He didn't come back until the following afternoon. Jack was smiling at her as he got out of the Olds; the black eye had faded to only the lightest shadow, something she only saw because she knew where to look for it. At first she thought he was slightly nervous, then realized she was still on edge, no doubt reading her odd temper into his.

"Missed you last night." He kissed her on the forehead as she let him in the kitchen.

"I needed some time. But I'm glad you're back."

Leon Russell sang on the record player as Jack took her hand. "I was wondering if you wanted to go to dinner."

"I don't think I want to go out."

"Oh. Well – what about dancing?"

"You don't dance."

"I'd watch you."

Irina smiled and kissed his cheek. "I don't really feel like dancing."

To her surprise, he laughed – Jack, who nearly never laughed. "You're not going to let me make a production of this, are you?"

She cocked her head. "A production?"

His hand tightened around hers. "Maybe it's better this way. I never was much on ceremony. And – honestly, I don't think I could hold onto this much longer."

They were standing in her little kitchen – dishes in the drying rack and a bowl of oranges next to her arm, the afternoon sun filtering through her eyelet curtains – and Irina never forgot exactly how it all looked. Her memory, always excellent, never failed her on the details of the moment Jack took the ring out of his pocket.

"I'm not good with words – I know that –" Jack was apologizing for his own proposal before he made it. "Even if I were, I could never tell you how much I love you."

"Jack –" she whispered, holding her hand just over the ring, not touching it. As they both looked down, the diamond caught the afternoon light.

"I know my work complicates things. And I know that I'm not the easiest –" He breathed out, impatient with himself. "You could have anyone. But I would do – will do anything to see that you have a good life, that we have a good life together. I think I could give that to you." He raised his eyes to hers, his expression softer and more open than she had ever seen that. "And I'm certain that I could never be happier than I would be with you."

Irina blinked quickly, unsure whether she was willing tears into her eyes or trying to push them away. The tumult of emotions within her could be dealt with later. She could sort them out, make them all make sense. Standing here with Jack, she knew only that she was safe, and that the dangers she'd imagined last night seemed very far away.

She kissed Jack once, gently, then whisper, "Yes."

Jack breathed out, so obviously relieved that she had to smile. His hand was slightly unsteady as he lifted the ring from its blue-velvet box and slipped it onto her finger; Irina had expected it not to fit, but it did. He had estimated the size exactly, as though the ring had been made for her.

"It's beautiful." As he embraced her, she whispered, "I'll be a good wife to you. For whatever time we have –"

"Shhhh, Laura. Don't think about that." She could feel Jack's kiss against her cheek.

Wrapping her arms around Jack's neck, Irina closed her eyes tightly. "I won't."


	4. Chapter 4

**March 2004**

_Los Angeles, California _

 

Jack sat in the front seat of his car, currently parked in a garage he'd never visited before, in an area of town slightly out of his way. His private laptop was balanced on the passenger seat. These safeguards were largely psychological; if Irina's communications were being tracked to Los Angeles by any party, he would automatically be one of the top suspects. But the network they'd set up should have been untraceable.

Of course, communication with Irina held other difficulties.

 

_I can't make it to Berlin._

TROUBLE?

They could be expecting me. I'd prefer to avoid that.

 

Two days ago, Jack had heard Vaughn and Weiss talking in the hallway about Vaughn's new girlfriend. Sydney hadn't been dead for a year. Jack had ground his way through the rage by holding out an image of Berlin in his mind: the comfort of Irina's body and her memories and her shared anger at Vaughn. That was gone now, and he felt the weight of grief on him once more.

 

_I HAD COUNTED ON SEEING YOU._

So had I. We have important things to discuss.

 

Important enough not to trust to any transmission – that was interesting. But that wasn't what he'd been trying to say to her. He thought it over for a moment, then thought, What the hell.

 

_THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT._

I'll find a way for us to be together soon.

AFTER BERLIN, I'LL BE STATESIDE FOR AT LEAST ONE MONTH.

I'll see what I can do.

 

The communication went dead; neither of them was much on goodbyes. Jack wondered if she would concoct some international crisis that would call for his involvement, then wished he had specifically warned her not to do that.

He drove back to his house and sat up for hours. Lately he'd been able to keep it at one Scotch a night, and although he often thought about pouring himself another, he didn't.

**

One week after his trip to Berlin, Jack came home on Friday night to find Irina in the kitchen, stirring a large pot of soup.

"Welcome home," she said, still looking down at the soup as she scattered parsley across the bubbling surface. "I hope you haven't eaten. I'm starved."

Jack was neither delighted or enraged; he was too startled to feel anything else. "You've taken an incredible risk."

Irina shrugged. She was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, with her hair tugged back in a ponytail; that was what she'd often worn around the house, years ago. "Think about it, Jack. This is the one place they'd never look for me."

The smartest thing to do would have been to get Irina out of the house by any means necessary and insist that she find her own way out of the country. But she glanced at him for the first time, and he saw the twist of her lips. This was a dare, a stupidly dangerous one – between two people with nothing left to lose.

He set down his briefcase and began shrugging off her coat. "What's for dinner?"

Her smile widened. "Black bean soup. Your favorite."

"Have you made that once in the past 25 years?"

"You'll have to judge if I'm out of practice."

The spell of lost days nearly encircled him, but Jack resisted. "I've often thought – you must have hated this."

"Soup?" Irina arched one eyebrow.

"Cooking. Shopping. Having dinner ready when I got home. For a woman of your talents, it can't have been much of a challenge."

"Not every pleasure is a challenge." Although Irina was no longer smiling, the light in her eyes was gentler now – more natural. "You studied the Soviet Union, Jack. You must have realized that I spent my childhood standing in lines, waiting to buy whatever they had at the store, if they had anything. Oxtails. Stale bread."

It was the first reminiscence from her past that Irina had ever shared. He was too surprised to immediately respond.

She seemed lost in reverie as she kept stirring the soup. "I loved going to the grocery and being able to buy whatever I wanted. I loved cooking with every ingredient I could imagine. That was something I never got tired of." The glitter was back in her eyes when she finally looked at him again. "One of the things I never got tired of."

Jack walked to his wife's side, as he had most nights for a decade, and kissed her soundly on the cheek. Then they kissed again, mouths open, taking their time.

When he changed out of his business clothes, he saw that Irina had already settled her things into his bedroom – their bedroom – most of them in the same places they'd been long ago. Jack understood the game she was playing with both of them, knew that she understood the futility of it as much as he did. But for tonight, he was at home with his wife, and it seemed all right to pretend.

**

"What's the significance of 'St. Aidan'?"

Irina didn't answer him for a moment. They were in his study, downloading files from her laptop into his. Papers were spread out around them, thick with Rambaldi etchings; even as they'd had dinner together, neither of them had lost sight of their only true goal.

"The name carries several connotations," she said at last. Her finger traced over one of the Rambaldi eyes on a photocopy of a parchment. "Many believers have created different meanings for it."

"Could it be an anagram of some kind?"

"I don't think so." Irina's lack of interest in following a Rambaldi clue was encouraging, though her face was drawn. "All that matters for us is that certain people of interest have used it as a security phrase or code name during the past two decades. " Beginning around the time Irina had left – that was interesting, although Jack did not intend to question Irina about that part of their pasts. "One of them was a banker named Adrian Lazarey."

Jack peered over Irina's shoulder, putting his hands on her arms as he did so, to see the black-and-white picture of Lazarey – a thin man with a face that seemed to have been chiseled in granite by a misanthropic sculptor. "What do you know about him?"

"He used to be deeply invested in Rambaldi lore – a rival of mine, once, though we've never met. But he turned away from that path. I can't imagine why."

In Jack's opinion, Lazarey was the first person he'd ever heard of who had responded sanely to this mess. "You haven't paid him a visit, though that seems to be the logical next step."

"He died last week." She looked over her shoulder at Jack. "Murdered in his office. Someone slit his throat."

"And we'd like to know who. Beyond that?"

"Some people with Covenant connections have been tracing activity in Lazarey's accounts – which didn't stop with his death. Somebody else has access to that money, and it appears as though the Covenant would like their share."

"Account traces, security tapes. I'm on it."

"Thank you." Her muscles relaxed beneath his hands, and her head fell back against the chair. Jack brushed beneath her chin with his thumb. She murmured, "I'm going to bed. Coming with me?"

Those words, spoken just that way, had always made his pulse quicken. He touched her cheek and kept his voice casual. "I'll be up in a minute."

Irina's languid smile made the rest of the room – the charts and diagrams meant to map a path to the Covenant – fade away. "Don't be too long."

He waited almost ten minutes for no reason at all, save that he had usually gone to bed after she did. Pacing through the living room and the hallways, Jack realized that his own home seemed strange to him now; he expected the yellow paint on the kitchen walls, the burgundy sofa, the carpet in the back room instead of hardwood. He sought the house he had shared with his wife and child. Perhaps Irina had found it.

Shutting off one light, then another, Jack worked his way through the house, darkness behind him marking his path toward Irina. In the hallway he paused and put one hand on the closet doorframe where faint pencil marks were labeled, _"Age 5," "Age 8," "Age 11."_ He hadn't bothered measuring after that. He'd never painted over the marks.

When he went in the bedroom, Irina lay on her side, eyes half-closed. She was wearing a nightgown; Jack wouldn't have guessed she still owned one. They said nothing, but he could feel her eyes following him as he undressed, putting every piece of clothing back where it belonged.

Jack climbed into bed beside her, and they kissed as his arm slid across her belly. "Did you double-check all the doors?" she murmured against his ear.

"Always. I have other measures too."

"I got through them."

"I doubt anyone else could." Jack felt her smile against his shoulder as he drew her closer; their methods of flattery had changed over the years. "We're safe."

"Safe and sound." She touched him through his boxers, lazy strokes, and he cupped his hand against the underside of her breast, as easily as though they'd done this last night, and a dozen nights before, and would for hundreds of nights to come.

**

The next morning was worse than any Jack had known since he had accepted Sydney's death. He woke up beside his wife and, in his first confused moment of consciousness, expected Sydney to run in and awaken them. It seemed as though he could feel the mattress shift with her slight weight – and then he remembered.

Jack lay still and silent until Irina stirred beside him; their eyes met, and he knew she felt it too – the wrongness of their daughter's absence. She reached for his hand before he could offer it, and for a long time they lay quiet. Every other morning they had spent together had been full of talk about Sydney, memories of her when they could share them; now they had no words. The silence that had once been filled with Sydney's laughter said everything.

They were gentle with one another that morning. Too gentle, more than they'd been as husband and wife. As they made breakfast, drank coffee, settled into their work – Jack touched her shoulder, and Irina kissed his cheek. It was all strange, and yet not so strange. Jack understood that they were giving each other the kindness they could no longer give to Sydney.

But that only reminded him how little of that kindness he had given to Sydney when he could have. He had thought his bitterness and anger would poison her, almost as though it could have slipped through his skin into hers. As if anything could have corroded Sydney's hope, or her goodness.

Was there any part of his life in which he hadn't been a complete fool? Jack was beginning to suspect not.

Mid-afternoon, Irina suddenly said, "Sydney's baby things – you still have them."

"Yes. The cedar chest, in the attic."

"I'd like to look." The words carried an unspoken question – not permission, but invitation.

He'd look at it all as much as he could bear, and then some, but something in him recoiled from the idea of letting Irina go up there alone. Perhaps he wanted to be with her in her grief; perhaps he couldn't allow anyone, even her, to enter a space so private to him without being there to watch.

They pulled down the attic staircase and ascended together, Irina coughing slightly from the dust – and then there they were, surrounded by the battered remnants of their past.

Sydney's first shoes, no longer than his fingers. Oliver, a stuffed turtle she had carried with her for every day of kindergarten. A framed snapshot of him and Irina – Laura – standing at City Hall, just married; Jack had come close to burning that a dozen times, but Sydney had liked looking at it, and he'd always thought she would want it someday.

But Sydney had never asked for it.

Irina didn't just look in the cedar chest; she sifted through boxes and bags as well. Jack sifted through nothing, just stood in the center of the room, trying to face or touch nothing. Simply bearing the presence of so many memories was as much as he could answer for. It seemed like a very long time before Irina spoke. "You didn't keep many pictures of me."

"A few for Sydney. That's all."

"In your place, I wouldn't have kept any." She looked at him over one shoulder. "But you held on to a lot of things that were ours. That we shared together."

"I signed an affidavit agreeing to keep it all in one place, in case it ever needed to be searched. You hid clues everywhere."

By way of reply, Irina held up an album sleeve: faded blue, with a beaten white circle outlining where the album had rested for years. Leon Russell's face was almost gray now. "Remember when we bought this?"

"You bought it. The first day you followed me – at least, the first day you let me see you."

"I wasn't following you. I was just shopping for records."

Jack's mood was darkening by the second, but he mustered a response for her. "I don't believe in coincidence."

Irina gave him a smile as warm and uncertain as candlelight. "Neither do I."

"That's right. You believe in fate." He put one hand on the wall, just next to a poster of some actor Sydney and Francie had cooed over in junior high. Jack had tried to throw the poster out when she was 17, but Sydney, in a sulk, had removed it to the attic where it would be safe. He imagined her hand pushing in the thumbtacks, brushed his fingertip over the closest one.

In glittery Magic Marker ink, there on the margin, was written _Francie Calfo Depp._

Jack made a tactical move he rarely indulged in; he attacked without forethought: "Why did you have Francie killed?"

"What?"

"Francie Calfo. Sydney's best friend." Jack sifted through the debris in a sack, then pulled out a photo of smiling girls in high-school graduation gowns. He held it out to Irina, who did not take it; he let it drop to the floor, the image wavering back and forth as it settled to the dusty floor. "I think you should know the face. You assigned someone to steal it."

Irina did not explain herself. She merely stared down at the floor, at the image of two teenage girls grinning with curled diplomas in their hands, and said "I did not kill her. I bear some culpability, and it's not what I would have chosen –"

"I've used excuses like that. I know what they're worth."

"Then you know that even the most extreme measures can be necessary." The inadequacy of this statement awakened an emotion he had never expected to feel for Irina Derevko: contempt.

"Francie was like a sister to Sydney." The raggedness in his voice shamed him. "Sometimes – I think Francie was more her family than –" _Than I was._

"Than we were." She shared the blame. But it only stoked the fury that he hadn't known was building inside him until now, when it was swallowing him up in blindness and heat.

"Sydney never had anything but lies from me or you. Neither of us ever had anything but lies from you." Jack grabbed the first thing he could lay his hand on – the Leon Russell album – and slammed it down across the cedar chest's lid. Shards of black vinyl sprayed from the sleeve; Irina flinched, as if one of them had struck her, but otherwise didn't move. "Standing here and pretending that we were good parents – grieving for her as though we deserved it – when we took everything from Sydney that she needed –"

Irina marched two steps toward him and folded him in her arms. There was a long moment when Jack was uncertain whether he would hit her or return the embrace. But then his hands seemed to find her waist on their own, and gravity drew his forehead to her shoulder. Maybe it was just easier than fighting any longer.

Maybe that was what was tying him closer to Irina, all the time – the inertia of surrender. He would have liked to believe that it was that easy to explain. But as Irina held him, Jack suspected he'd be better off not asking the question in the first place.

She let go first, pacing away from him to stare once more at the cedar chest. Oliver looked up at them mournfully from his place atop Sydney's baby blanket.

"The record broke." He got the words out smoothly enough. "None of the pieces – you weren't hurt?"

"No." Irina combed her fingers through her hair. "It's been too much. Reminding you like this. I shouldn't have come."

"You always remind me of Sydney. It's just – stronger here."

"I didn't realize it would be like this, and I should have." She studied him with her head to one side. "But I like being reminded of her, even when it hurts. I don't think you do."

"I will -- always remember –" Jack paused, then continued when he could speak evenly. "Sometimes it becomes overpowering."

"I know."

Did she? Jack studied Irina for a few seconds, taking advantage of her distraction to measure her unobserved. Surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of their lives as husband and wife, it occurred to him that in some ways, she was still a stranger. Of all these memories, what was real? What were the lies? Could they ever map the boundary between truth and illusion?

He could have asked Irina, but sometimes she gave no answers.

In the end, they shared one another's wounds: fellow stigmatics for their daughter's death. Jack wasn't sure anything else mattered. His anger settled into something simpler and sadder.

When she turned back to him, he said only, "I can't believe I broke Leon."

Irina smiled at the same moment her eyes filled with tears.

 

**

**February 1972**

_Falls Church, VA_

 

"He cried. In public, in front of all those reporters." Irina refilled her husband's coffee, then her own. "You don't find that weak?"

"They insulted his wife." Jack seemed to think this excused Muskie entirely.

"You wouldn't show that kind of emotion openly."

"The press should count themselves very lucky that they didn't insult my wife."

His dark humor matched her own. "How very true."

Shelley brushed against her feet, the cat's fur velvety-soft against Irina's bare feet. They had adopted the old stray by degrees, first leaving out the odd can of tunafish, then letting her come in the house on a cold night in November, and finally taking her to the vet and buying a green collar. This had been the occasion when they'd discussed giving her an official name, something more literary than a pun on her tortoiseshell coat. It was Jack who had pointed out that Shelley was as literary a name as they could hope to create. Together they'd decided she was named for Mary, not Percy; Irina privately thought that, between her mission and his work on Project Christmas, they both had reasons to identify with a story about creating monsters.

They ate breakfast together at the table every day, using the good dishes and usually making more food than they could eat. In some ways, both she and Jack very consciously played the roles of ideal husband and wife in the mornings – it was a kind of playacting they were both trained for and enjoyed, the perfection of it a mutual joke. Sometimes they even called each other "Mr. Bristow" and "Mrs. Bristow," folding their cloth napkins in their lap.

("I think you like playing games," she'd said once, smiling at him over the comics.

"I think you know that already," he'd replied, the tone of his voice both deliciously familiar and inappropriate for the breakfast table. They'd both been late to work that day.)

In some ways, idyllic American family life was as alien to Jack as it was to Irina. They both made their way through this new land together, happy tourists well aware they didn't really belong and grateful for their luck.

"You're wearing a tie you hate." She dug her spoon into her grapefruit. "That usually means you have a big meeting."

"Big as in important people. Not big as in important." Jack folded the paper and went back to reading the stories about Nixon's visit to China. Irina, irritated by the endless coverage, vaguely wished she could point out that she'd trained in China for three months and thus beat Nixon there. But by now she was familiar with the pleasures of private amusement.

"The Chinese made the president eat a thousand-year-old egg," Jack said. "Supposedly it was an honor. The egg had turned black."

Irina grimaced. "On second thought, keep the omelets for yourself."

He smiled at her, and the façade of the ideal Mr. Bristow faded back into the face of her husband – the one that only Irina ever saw, knew or even guessed at. "I'll be home late. Again. I'm sorry, Laura."

"And will you be very bored?" She folded her hands beneath her chin. "If so, I could think of some ways to amuse you, later on."

"That gives me something to think about today." Jack kissed her cheek, then abandoned his breakfast to begin putting his things together for work. Irina often helped him with this, but this morning she didn't bother; if the meeting was so patently unimportant, bugging his clothes or briefcase wasn't worth the risk.

At the door, Jack knelt to scratch Shelley behind the ears. He was the last man in the world she would ever have suspected of a fondness for animals. Sometimes she thought his attention to Shelley was transferred affection for the children they might have had, but never would. Irina secretly took birth control pills, as KGB protocols dictated; a few months after their marriage, she had gently broken to Jack the "news" that her doctors said she was unlikely ever to conceive.

He had shown little reaction, and said only, "I'm not sure what kind of father I would have been, anyway." Since that day, his few references to the fact had always been sympathetic – feeling for her loss, not his own. But sometimes Irina felt a kind of sadness when she saw Jack paying attention to Shelley, and told herself that sadness was purely for him.

"What about you?" Jack glanced over at her as he put on his gloves. "Do I need to give you something to think about today?"

"You're already late." Irina laid her hands on his chest for a moment before he buttoned his coat. "Besides, I have yoga today. I'll be concentrating on flexibility. Maybe you should too, for tonight."

The innuendo didn't do its job. Jack frowned. "I thought you only had yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"I'm making up a lesson. In advance – we're supposed to get snow tomorrow, and I don't want to be on the road if I can help it."

Excuses that would have been perfectly good for anyone else were flimsy for Jack, and she could see it in his eyes – that momentary flicker of doubt that sometimes frightened her. Quickly, she kissed him on the mouth, hoping the touch would erase his worries.

When they parted, he was smiling. "Flexibility, you said?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I'll be home as early as I can."

"Thought you might." She waved as he walked out to the Olds, then washed up the breakfast dishes. That gave her two hours to work on her thesis, taking occasional breaks to tease Shelley with a bit of yarn, before she had to leave to meet Gerard Cuvee at the Holiday Inn.

**

"He told you he has a meeting, and you didn't bother planting a listening device?" Gerard stubbed out the last inch of one cigarette, then immediately lit another. Irina, by now unaccustomed to tobacco smoke, didn't hide her distaste.

"I told you, the meeting is nothing. Bureaucracy. Do you think I have enough free time to transcribe endless hours of meetings about the correct procedure for distributing memos?"

"You are an agent. Free time is not something you possess. Every moment you are in the United States, you are working for the Soviet Union. I dislike reminding you of this."

"I think you like it very much."

Gerard's eyes narrowed. Had she ever been fond of him? Irina knew it was true, but those emotions seemed to belong to someone else entirely – a girl impressed by big talk and shallow power. Perhaps she should request another handler. That could be arranged, if she could work out a way to communicate privately with another KGB officer. Elena, perhaps?

As Irina plotted, Gerard sat down heavily at the cheap, faux-wood table and examined the reports she'd brought him. "More of the same. More of the same. Aren't you making any progress?"

"I can't report on developments in Project Christmas until there are developments. Everything is still theoretical. You know this."

"America has given you a sharp tongue, Irina."

"I always had one, Gerard. I think distance has given you amnesia."

"Amnesia." He slapped the folder shut, smiling at some private joke. For the second time that day, Irina felt a jolt of fear – but then soothed herself. If Jack called the house, he would think she was at yoga. Everything was covered. Everything was safe.

"I should go soon. I don't suppose you brought me any correspondence?" The only letter Gerard had given her in the past year was a note from Katya telling her that Dadushka had died.

"I've brought you nothing. And you've brought me nothing. These reports are useless."

"I explained –"

"To hell with Project Christmas. That's your main work here, but do you think that's all you're meant to do? You know, or you did know, that you were being sent to an up-and-coming CIA officer. We want to know who his friends are. What they discuss over coffee or drinks. His thoughts on the power play in the office, so that his analysis is our analysis. You've given us none of that."

Irina tucked her hair behind her ear, so that she had something to do with her hands besides making a rude gesture. "Jack doesn't like to talk about work at home more than necessary. So I try to keep my questions to –"

"Jack doesn't like it? Jack doesn't like it? This is a reason?" Gerard folded his arms. "Since when does it matter to you what Jack Bristow likes?"

"I am his wife! Or so he believes, and I have to make him think –"

"You are his wife. Yes, I think you are."

"Bristow is nothing to me." Irina knew this was untrue, but Gerard was making wild accusations now, spinning fantasies from his undoubted jealousy. "I do my job. I'm not confused."

"No? Then prove it." His hand gripped her shoulder, the heel of his hand hard against her collarbone, then moved roughly down to her breast. "For old times' sake, shall we say?"

She was more jolted than she ought to have been. Gerard had not been her lover in a while – since before she'd married Jack –

"Why the hesitation? You used to be so impatient for your nights with me."

Irina didn't hide her disgust. "You used to know how to win a girl. An art you've lost, I see."

"I won you a long time ago. The question is whether or not Bristow has won you. And I think he has. We can't have that."

Images flashed in front of her, blurry but powerful: Gerard reporting her as a lost asset, the KGB taking her back to the USSR so that she could rot in prison, even possibly an assassination of Jack to keep him from suspecting what they had done –

She made herself relax and gave Gerard a smile. "You know, you could just order champagne from room service." His hands were cold in hers. "A much nicer way to get what you want."

He laughed and ran his hands through her hair – too hard, so that it pulled and hurt. "Don't pretend to like it. The only one you're lying to is yourself." Then Gerard pulled back, studying her dispassionately. "Now. Take off your clothes."

The room was too cold for nakedness, and Gerard looked at her body as though it displeased him – but he pushed her back on the bed all the same. Of course, she could kill him. For all his training and self-avowed expertise, Gerard wasn't half the fighter she was, and this might be the time to prove it. But Irina knew if she did that, the wrath of her superiors would fall on her and on Jack.

So she didn't fight.

It hurt more than Irina would have thought. Gerard kept one hand on the back of her neck the whole time, holding her in place.

When it was over, and she was collecting her clothes, Gerard said, "Do you know why I've done this, Irina?"

"To teach me a lesson."

"But not the lesson you think. Maybe you believe this is about power – but it's not, not really." He dressed slowly, as if taunting her by remaining unclothed in her presence as long as possible. "I want you to remember this, later."

"I won't forget." Someday, Gerard would know just what she meant by that.

"You hated this, don't you? Hated it so much you imagine killing me. But you wanted me once, Irina, and it was Bristow you had contempt for. That is the real you, the person you truly are. Your disgust for me and your infatuation with your CIA husband – those are the illusions. They are making you mad. It's my job to awaken you."

Her palms bore small red crescents from her fingernails. "You call this awakening, and you call me mad."

"Someday, Irina. You will look back, and you will remember that it was your nights with him you enjoyed, and your time with me that you hated. And when you remember that, you will know how lost to madness you truly were."

More grotesque than anything else – even than Gerard's contemptuous use of her body – was Irina's fear that he might be right.

**

Jack came home that night in good spirits and obviously having given much thought to the idea of flexibility. But Irina knew her body would bear bruises that yoga couldn't explain, and she feigned a cold. Jack made her tea and propped her up in bed with a book. While he watched "Columbo" on TV in the next room, she stared uncomprehendingly at the pages, turning them every few minutes without registering a word.

When Jack slipped quietly into bed beside her in the dark, Irina tensed, suddenly terrified of her own husband's desire. But he went to sleep without disturbing her, so she could rest and get well.

That excuse worked for three days. But Irina kept turning from him after that, unable to think of enduring his touch, or anyone's. She gave no explanations – how could she? – but simply picked fights, stayed up late, did whatever she could do. Nights seemed to stretch out forever, fear tugging at Irina's gut whenever Jack stirred.

Jack's temper, tricky at the best of times, was not improved by abstinence. Irina's misery was more acute for not having a name. She had not been raped – she would not countenance the idea, rejecting even the word out of hand – but having no name for what had happened left her with no path to follow out of the gloom that had surrounded her.

Her distance and coldness went on, long enough that she was sure Jack would become angry. She craved his anger – to find out what he would do when he was pushed hard enough, to see what he was like when the veneer of affection was peeled away. Maybe then she would see beneath the illusion, get at what was true.

Instead, Jack sat down with her one night, as seriously as he might have conducted any meeting at the CIA. "Have I done something wrong?" Jack didn't try to cuddle or cajole her; Irina appreciated that. But his wistfulness as he touched her hand only made the lump in her throat swell tighter. "Laura – just tell me if I –"

"It's not you." Except that it was, but not in any way he could prevent or even know. "I'm having a difficult time right now. That's all there is to it."

"Are you worried about school?" He didn't seem to believe that explanation, but he was obviously eager to find some problem that he could attack, then solve for her. That was the way his mind worked. "Is somebody giving you a hard time?"

"No. Jack, please." Irina pushed away from the table; looking back at Jack would have meant seeing the disappointment in his eyes, so she did not. "I have to work this out for myself."

The only question to work out was whether or not Gerard was right.

From the beginning she had known that she liked Jack more than she was ever meant to. She had deliberately taken pleasure in his body when she shouldn't have; she had pitied him, which was worse. But all of that was nothing, if it wasn't affecting her work. Surely she remained the person she had been when the KGB sent her here.

But if that was true, then Gerard's advances should have been welcome, or at least meaningless. Instead he had repulsed her, so much so that his subsequent violation had been powerless to increase it.

Gerard had been her first lover; she had taken him home to her family, and yet he knew less of how she felt about them than Jack, who only knew them as ghosts with false names. And even now – when she had nightmares about Gerard's hand at the back of her neck – Jack's pain and confusion bothered her as much as her own. Irina did not want to believe it, but she was intelligent enough to understand herself, and not as gifted in self-deception as Jack.

And yet – would she believe what Gerard claimed she would, someday? Would she convince herself that she had not been happy here, that she could not have cared for Jack? Irina knew better than to think it was impossible.

Nothing seemed permanent. Nothing seemed real. Perhaps the lies had all piled up, one by one, until they crushed her.

She found her way through the maze one night almost a month later – by far the longest they had yet gone without making love – when Jack came home from work late. "You look tired," she said, not rising from the sofa for a hug or kiss, though she was profoundly glad to see him.

"Long day." He didn't elaborate, and she didn't ask. To hell with Gerard's reports, at least for now.

Jack hesitated, and in that moment she saw that he was carrying some weight of his own – probably his mute confusion at her coldness. He wanted comfort, but he would never ask for it, because it wasn't his way. Besides, most of his life, if he had asked there would have been no one to answer. One day she wouldn't be here to answer either.

Then Shelley rubbed against his legs, and Jack bent down to scratch her behind the ears.

_I know this man,_ Irina told herself. _If that is not real, nothing is. _

She launched herself from the sofa, startling Shelley, and wrapped her arms tightly around Jack's neck; he stumbled backward until they sat on the floor. It felt as though she hadn't held him in years. Irina kissed his face, his neck, his mouth, even his ears, then pushed him flat on his back to cover him. He was smart enough to simply kiss her back.

When she had calmed herself, Irina lay her head against his chest, the cotton of his shirt warm from his skin. "Been a while," he murmured.

"Too long. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. You've been unhappy." Jack's lips brushed her hair. "I wish I could make you happy."

"You do."

"Not lately." The blame in his voice was for himself.

"That's my fault. Not yours." Already a weight seemed to have lifted from her, as though she were floating free. "It's better now."

For a few seconds, he was quiet, and Irina knew he was debating whether or not to press the issue, seek real answers. But he allowed her space and always had; it was the only way he could have any for himself, the only way their relationship worked. So he only said, "I was starting to think I'd have to do something dramatic."

"Such as –"

"I don't know. Whisk you off to the Caribbean. Buy jewelry. Serenade you. Something. Grand gestures aren't my strong suit."

How long had it been since she'd laughed? "Serenade me? I don't think I've ever heard you sing."

"I would, if it would help."

Jack Bristow trying to be romantic was a bit like a bear trying to dance. Irina kissed his mouth again, then told him – for the first time, though he didn't know it – "I love you."

"Love you too." He got them to their feet, then finally got around to taking off his overcoat. "Why don't we order Chinese?"

"I could cook something –"

"I've got it." He kissed her forehead, then released her – unwilling, Irina realized, to push her any further than she was willing to go.

So she was the one who led him into the bedroom, undressed them both, coaxed him to lie back so that she could love him. Jack ran his fingers through her hair, pulling the strands back so that he could watch her as she caressed him with her tongue. For a while, Irina lay her head on his belly, sucking too gently for him to come – just enough to keep him in a dizzy state of bliss for as long as she could manage.

At last Irina let Jack cover her body with his; he understood enough to be tender, to take his time. They rocked each other in a lulling rhythm, whispering wordless sounds of encouragement and welcome.

Against her collarbone, Jack murmured, "I missed you."

Irina wrapped her legs more tightly around her, as though she could completely enclose him. "I missed you too. And I love you. So much."

If her love for Jack was an illusion, then everything was an illusion. Nothing was real, nothing had to fit together, nothing had to make sense. She was free to fall into the moment with him, and never look back.


	5. Chapter 5

**June 2004**

_Osaka, Japan_

 

"You ask for sensitive information. I don't think you appreciate how unlikely it is that I would give it to you."

Jack smiled easily at his contact, a small-time player who'd never left the shallow water. Let him learn about the deep. "Mr. Shinozawa, I don't think you appreciate my determination."

Shinozawa gestured imperiously for the waiter to refill the three champagne glasses at the table – more to show off his wealth and luxury, Jack thought, than from any sense of soothing tensions. They sat in Shinozawa's restaurant, sleek with chrome and blue with neon, hours after the last guests had left. Jack was still wearing his tuxedo from the opera, where they'd made contact; he considered loosening his bow tie, but decided that could be left for later.

"No doubt you will now offer me money." Shinozawa pursed his lips for a sip. "But in this matter, I will not be bought."

"I'm not going to offer you money. I'm going to offer you your life."

Even before Jack had spoken the last word, Irina had her knife in her hand and her hand at Shinozawa's throat. The guards both vaulted forward, but Irina said, "One move and he dies."

They froze. The guards were two large men, and Irina was a woman in high heels – but the guards weren't fools.

Jack took a moment to appreciate the picture; Irina's bronze-colored gown caught the candlelight nicely, the city lights behind providing a silhouette that outlined every muscle in her arms. She could even be beautiful doing this. Especially doing this.

Shinozawa's laugh sounded even more nervous than Jack would have expected. "What – you think that – you're going to have your girlfriend kill me?"

"Don't be silly. She's not my girlfriend. She's my wife."

"And I don't work for him." Irina's earlier silence – playing to the expectations of a tradition-bound Japanese man – was clearly over. "You know where the tapes of Lazarey's murder are kept. You're going to tell us where they are."

"You don't understand – these people, they've put trust in me –"

"No, Mr. Shinozawa, they have not." It was tiresome, Jack thought, explaining the rules to someone who would never benefit from them. "They let you determine the hiding place of the security tapes because they believed you were so insignificant that nobody would ever find you. They also thought that, if you died, you wouldn't represent much of a loss."

Irina's fingernails scraped across Shinozawa's bald pate. "It's always difficult, seeing ourselves as others see us. But you should listen to my husband. He's telling you the truth."

Jack spent a few moments studying the reflected red and gold of Irina's necklace in the blade of her knife. Shinozawa would either talk soon or begin the process of being persuaded to talk through nonverbal means; in either case, Jack had nothing left to say.

"South Africa." Shinozawa was trembling now. "A bank vault in Johannesburg. Somerset House."

Irina's blade pressed in, creating a red drop of blood just above his Adam's Apple. "Somerset House stopped operations decades ago."

"Keys still exist for some of the boxes! And the vaults -- they're among the most secure in the world, even now – they've gone unopened for all these years, even though the old bank is deserted –"

The man was sweating, his pupils constricted with fear. Jack decided he was telling the truth. "Where is the key?" Shinozawa held up his left hand; Jack slipped off the wristwatch and turned it over, easily finding the small compartment behind the face. "Which box?"

"Number 47."

"What a surprise." Jack glanced up at Irina, who nodded, then slit Shinozawa's throat.

The guards lunged forward, but Jack's pistol was already in his hand. They went still as Shinozawa fell to the black tile floor, gurgling out his last moments. One of them finally stammered out, "But – you said if he told you –"

"I made him no promises. I won't make any to you, either. Shinozawa would have told his superiors that we'd been here, where we were going. I know that beyond any doubt." Jack considered them from behind his gun's barrel. "What I can't decide is whether or not you'll do the same."

Irina carefully wiped the knife clean of blood and fingerprints, then put it beside Shinozawa's spattered plate, lining it up with the fork. Though she never looked at the guards, her words were for them. "Let me make a gesture as a sign of good faith. I realize that we've taken away your employer, and therefore your jobs. But if you go to Ms. Takahara – I thought you might know the name – and tell her that Irina Derevko sent you, she'll give you places in her organization. Better pay. Better food in her restaurant, too, if tonight's offerings are any indication. I think you'd prefer making new friends to making new enemies. Wouldn't you?"

After the guards had gone, Jack and Irina strolled along the busy Osaka streets, arm in arm. Peddlers called to them, offering trinkets or photos or rides in foot-pedaled carts; Irina smiled to every one before turning them down. He and Irina might have been any wealthy couple on their way back from a night on the town. Jack found himself walking more slowly, savoring the time. Irina's brilliant jewelry and shimmering dress caught the lights, making her part of the city's glitter.

"Will Takahara really hire them?" Jack put his hand on the small of her back to guide her into their hotel.

"Yes. She owes me a favor; she'll be aware that she's getting off lightly."

"They're terrible bodyguards."

"I know. That may be useful someday."

He kissed her temple in the elevator; her breath caught in her throat, which was encouraging. "I should have known," Jack murmured, brushing his lips against her forehead, then her hair. "Thinking ahead."

"Wait." Irina's hands were flat against his chest, as though she were steadying herself. "We need to wait."

They made it to their hotel room; Jack didn't turn on the light as he shut the door behind them, then pushed her against it gently, framing her body with his own. To his surprise, Irina put one hand on his mouth, preventing a kiss, then snapped on the light. "A few minutes more, Jack. Or are you in a hurry?"

Jack stepped away and sat down in the room's white-leather armchair, willing to play Irina's games, whatever they might be. It was difficult to remember that, until recently, he'd despised this element of her character. Now it intrigued him. "I think you'll discover that there's no rush. We can go as slowly as you like."

Her languid smile made him even hungrier for her, but he matched her casual moves, leaning back in the chair as she slipped off each sandal. "I'll hold you to that. But first – there's something I want to discuss."

"Name it."

"What do you plan to do, after this?"

That should have been obvious. "I arranged a deep cover assignment so we'd have freedom to operate for a while – a few weeks, at least. We'll have to split up for Johannesburg, but after that –"

"No." Irina turned on a mica-shaded lamp on the desk, then turned off the overhead light, so that they were bathed in a soft amber glow. Jack approved. The lights of the city outside, blinking in a thousand colors, filtered through the gauzy curtains now, burnishing her thick hair into a halo. "I meant, after we find Sydney's killers. After they're dead. Then what?"

Jack had given absolutely no thought to this question; the answer couldn't possibly matter. "I don't know. I don't really care."

"Then let me make a suggestion. Come work with me."

No, he'd heard her correctly. Although he would have preferred to offer a response more eloquent than staring, that was all Jack had to offer.

Irina appeared not to have expected anything else. "You would learn many things that way. I can't promise that you'll like everything you learn. But you'd lead a better life than you do with the CIA. I wouldn't ask you to betray your country's secrets, but I know you're long past sacrificing yourself for patriotic ideals. The only loyalties that endure are personal; you believe that as strongly as I do."

What was more incredible, the fact that Irina Derevko was talking about their personal loyalty to one another, or the fact that Jack believed her?

"Besides – we make a good team."

They worked together well. But what were they supposed to be working for? After finding Sydney's killers – he couldn't finish that sentence, much less the life it was meant to describe. And yet – the past few months with Irina –

The first words Jack could muster were, "I'm flattered."

"You should be."

"I didn't expect this." Jack had spent nearly 40 years of his life constructing tactical scenarios for every possible opportunity or disaster, yet he had never considered an invitation like this. "I can't give you an answer tonight."

"You can't?" She cocked her head, her lips turning upward ever so slightly, and Jack realized that he'd surprised her – pleasantly. Irina had expected him to say no. And yet, she had asked anyway. Jack lifted one hand from the arm of the chair; she took it in hers, her touch warm. "That means you'll consider it."

He tightened his fingers around her wrist, feeling the feathery beat of the pulse beneath the skin. The truth of what he was willing to do unnerved him, but he faced it. Perhaps they had finally reached the point when nothing would answer between them except the truth. "Yes. I'll consider it."

In an instant she was kissing him fiercely; her hands gripped his arms so hard it hurt. He responded to her kiss, racing to match the intensity of her response. Maybe it was the hope for the future. Maybe it was their shared fear of it. But something had set her free, made her wild.

Jack pulled her into his lap, his hands moving down her back, caressing her thighs – but the heavy beaded gown was cold and rough against his palms.

"I want you." His voice sounded ragged, even to his own ears. "I want to touch you."

Irina's smile made him want to push her to the floor and take her, that moment, even with the damned dress still on. Even as he tried to embrace her more tightly, Irina slipped from him to stand. He drank in everything about her – the akimbo bend of her arms as she unzipped her gown from behind, the shivery sound of the fabric as it fell to the floor, the sheer black gauze of the thong that followed it.

All she wore now were the heavy jeweled bracelets and necklace; they caught the lamp's amber light. As she reached for the necklace's clasp, Jack shook his head. "Leave those on."

Her husky laugh made her breasts tremble. "What about you?" She knelt in front of him, catching one loop of his bowtie with a crooked finger. "You haven't even loosened your tie."

"I was waiting for you to do that." He kissed her throat, his lips touching both the warmth of her skin and the cold gems of her necklace.

Irina untied the black silk, then loosened his collar, her tongue dipping in to lick the hollow beneath his Adam's apple. As their mouths met again, her strong, sure hands unzipped his trousers. She had always known just how to touch him.

When she bowed to take him in, Jack let his head fall back onto the cool leather. He combed his fingers through Irina's thick hair and stopped thinking, letting himself go to a place without words or questions, without anything but the wet slip of Irina's tongue, the soft pull that made him turn slowly, so slowly, inside out.

Afterward, Jack spent the better part of an hour luxuriating in her responses – working her with his fingers while she straddled him on the chair, fucking her with his hand while he pressed her against the wall, and finally going down on her on the bed, coaxing one last climax from her. By the time he finally took off his last piece of clothing and joined her beneath the covers, her limbs were trembling. Jack gave her light, quick kisses as he carefully removed her jewelry and set it on the bedstand, then stroked her back until her breathing slowed and his own heartbeat returned to normal.

"I'll have to ask you to live with me more often." Irina hugged the pillow beneath her head, looking up at him with one half-closed eye.

"I asked you once. Only fair."

"You proposed to me in the kitchen. Because I wouldn't go out to eat, or go dancing. So you just said it right there, next to the sink and the bowl of oranges."

He'd never imagined she remembered it as clearly as he did, and yet he'd forgotten all about the oranges. "I didn't realize the memory mattered to you."

"Do you still think it was all a lie? Even now?"

"No." It had taken him a long time to see this; without the past year by Irina's side, he would never have seen it. "I know what missions like that ask for, and what they don't. You and I – that wasn't by the book."

"No. It wasn't." She paused for the length of three breaths. "I broke rules for you, Jack."

"Getting attached?"

"More than that."

He smiled at her. "All right. Name one."

"I had Sydney." As always, their daughter's name softened the silence around them, closing them away from the rest of the world.

"I always thought – I used to believe that was part of your assignment." Sometimes Jack had believed Irina created a child specifically for him to run Project Christmas on, the ultimate fulfillment of her work: studying the test, then studying the primary test subject.

"Not that." She rolled over onto his shoulder, her cheek against his collarbone, a hard and uncomfortable embrace. "The rest of it – the truth and lies are hard to separate. But not Sydney."

"I understand," Jack said, and he did.

**

They parted the next day, planning to meet again in three weeks in Santiago. Jack felt curiously alone as he flew to Mumbai; that was the only emotion he could easily identify. The others were too jumbled to distinguish, and Jack had never been possessed of that kind of clarity.

He wasn't happy; after Sydney's death, Jack's life could never again be happy, and he knew it. But Irina's invitation had changed things – altered his expectations. Once they had revenge for their daughter's murder, maybe the two of them could put together the shattered fragments of their life they'd once had together. It would never be as good as it had been before – without Sydney, that was impossible – but it might be enough to live on.

Before he could go to Johannesburg and find answers, he had work to do. Jack would spend two days in Mumbai, filing off a packet of reports to the CIA that suggested his deep-cover assignment in India was proceeding as planned. For two days, he would register on their radar – just barely. Then he could perform his real tasks and rejoin Irina.

Hopefully. Robert Lindsay's NSA operatives had been probing a little too close for comfort lately.

He remained focused on the work at hand. Packet sent, Jack now had a day to spend on his own. He needed to be seen in the city at least once, so he went for a long stroll, hoping he would be picked up by a few cameras here and there. Juhu Beach seemed ideal – out in the open, very crowded, thronged with tourists.

But as he walked along the pathway farthest from the shore, Jack realized that Juhu Beach was also full of children. Naked babies laughing as they toddled through the sand, little girls who held their fathers' hands, teenagers with ponytails and bracelets who strolled on the border between awkwardness and beauty.

Sydney was everywhere. She always would be.

The last time he had been in India, Sydney and Irina had both been with him on a mission; it was their first week as a family in twenty years, and the last they would ever have. Sydney had watched her parents so closely, a smile playing just beneath the surface every time they spoke to each other gently or worked together. Jack had despised her wishful thinking then, but now it seemed to him that his daughter had possessed a strange gift of prophecy. Although he wasn't a man who believed in any afterlife, free of the illusion of being watched over and approved or disapproved, Jack found some comfort in the hope that Sydney would have been happy at their reunion. It would have been the first time he'd made her happy in years.

Whirling colors at the corner of his eye caught Jack's attention; it took him a few moments to recognize the structure as a carousel. It was a flimsy creation – multicolored wooden poles, with thin, stylized horses hanging from hooks above bare sand. But the children loved it anyway, just as Sydney had loved the one in the park. He remembered standing there with Irina, as Laura, watching their little girl as one family.

Then he remembered standing there with the adult Sydney, trying and failing to recapture the past. He remembered encouraging her to trust her instincts about her future. He felt that she had listened – that it was one of the few times he had spoken to her as father and made a real difference. Yet Sydney had never left the CIA.

Jack knew the truth for an hour or more before he accepted it. As soon as he had, he went back to his hotel and set into motion the sequence that would lead to Irina phoning him on the secure line. This protocol was intended for emergencies – but it would be cruel to wait any longer.

She called within twenty minutes. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. It's not a crisis. But I needed to speak with you immediately."

"Okay." Her words were thick; perhaps she'd been sleeping. "What is it?"

"I can't leave the CIA."

Irina was quiet for a few moments, and Jack wondered if she would simply hang up. Would this end their alliance? But instead she answered him calmly. "I didn't think you would."

"I want you to understand –"

"I don't need your reasons."

"Just listen. Please." He hadn't used that word with her in a long time. It won him her silence, if only through surprise. "I know what you're offering me. This isn't easy."

The edge in her voice would cut glass. "I'm moved."

"Irina, nothing I have left matters more to me than you." The words were an admission of guilt; Jack wished he could have said them to her differently, that he'd said them to her before. Too late now. "But Sydney never quit the CIA, even when she could have. She believed in the work."

"You don't." Then she sighed. "But you want to do this for her."

Sydney's name was carved among the fallen. Jack could walk past it every day. He could look out for Dixon and Marshall, and even the faithless Michael Vaughn. Sydney would have understood all that. But no matter how much she had loved her mother, Sydney would never have understood Jack leaving the CIA. "Yeah. I do."

"I thought I was the one who wanted to be reminded of her." The sadness in Irina's voice had nothing to do with Jack; he knew that because he shared it. "I thought you were the one who couldn't bear to be reminded."

"We remember her in our own ways." They weren't the same way, and never would be. Sydney would always tie them together, and she would always keep them apart.

For a long time, they were both silent – precious seconds slipping away, making them traceable and trackable, and yet Jack couldn't bring himself to care. Were they broken apart again, or could their connection survive this? Jack knew he wouldn't be able to tell until he saw Irina again – if even then. He was sure only that they would never discuss any kind of reunion again.

"I'll see you in Santiago." Irina spoke as simply as if they'd been discussing the weather.

"Irina –" Jack gave Irina the only truth he had left for her. "Thank you."

"For asking?"

"No. For Sydney."

She paused, and if there was still anger between them, there was something else as well, something better. "It was worth it."

"Yes. Always."

The line went dead, and Jack went on to Johannesburg alone.

**

**July 1974**

_Falls Church, VA _

 

When Jack didn't arrive home on Tuesday afternoon, Irina thought little of it. He often returned from missions a few hours or even a day or two late, joking about broken trucks or mountain hikes or, once, a very long trip he'd taken on the back of a burro.

When Jack still hadn't arrived on Friday, Irina maintained her calm – until Arvin Sloane called.

"I don't suppose Emily's inviting us over for dinner." Stupid move. Her feeble joke made her sound more hysterical than open panic would have. Though why shouldn't Arvin know she was worried?

"This is official business, I'm afraid."

It took her less than a second to realize that, if Jack were dead, Arvin would have come in person. The brief pause was enough to make her stomach clench. "Where is he?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Rules, or you don't know?"

"Some of both." Arvin's calm was maddening. She knew that he cared about Jack – was as close a friend as Jack had ever had, apart from her – but that only made it worse. Irina fundamentally distrusted anyone more controlled than herself. "Jack's alive; we're sure of that. But we can't say when he'll be able to come home."

"All right." Everything felt off – the kitchen was too warm, the light too dim, every angle and shadow weirdly unfamiliar. Shelley blinked up at her, impassive, from the floor. Irina took a deep breath. "This wasn't just a change of plan, was it?"

"No. I shouldn't have even told you that much, Laura. And I can't tell you any more."

Irina sat down in the nearest chair, bracing one hand flat against the table. "Thank you for calling me. And for saying as much as you could."

Softly, Arvin answered, "Anything for you. You know that."

"Yes. I do." She hung up before he could speak another word.

Immediately she placed her next phone call, to one of the other TAs, arranging for him to cover the afternoon Tolstoy seminar. Though it wasn't close to Shelley's dinnertime, Irina shook some kibble into the ceramic yellow bowl on the floor. Then she made her way through the apartment – holding onto walls and doorframes and chairs, as though she were sick or drunk – to lie on the bed.

She lay on the right side; Jack took the left. Force of habit.

It wasn't a change of plan, a simple detour. Her husband wasn't playing a new and unexpected role, safe from harm, in control. Something had gone terribly wrong.

They knew Jack was alive. That was both comfort and torment. Because if they knew where he was, that meant he wasn't on the run, making his own way back to her any way he could. If the CIA knew where Jack was, that meant they knew he was in custody.

And if Jack was in custody, he was in terrible danger. Probably in terrible pain. Irina knew what captors did during questioning. She knew how to do all those things herself, how to wrack as much pain as possible from another human body.

Jack was going through that somewhere, right now, when he should be next to her.

Irina spent most of the afternoon simply lying in bed, numb and motionless, focusing on nothing more distant than Shelley. The old cat sat on the windowsill, watching the children playing in the pool downstairs; the reflected light on the ceiling dimmed as the sun set.

**

One week later, Irina went through the complicated set of steps that would signal to her handlers that she needed to speak to someone via phone. There was no way to be sure who would call her – after Elena had seen to Gerard Cuvee's transfer, Irina had taken orders from a number of people – but she had hopes.

As soon as she stepped into the phone booth on Vermont, it rang. Irina lifted the receiver to her ear, she knew her hopes had been answered.

"It's only been a month since we talked, you know." Katya sounded cranky; it was late in Washington, so her sister was up in the pre-dawn hours to talk to her. She spoke in English, as Irina could not afford to be overheard speaking in Russian in the heart of the capital of the United States. "Whatever can be so important?"

"Jack's missing. Captured, I think. The agency doesn't tell me much, and without Jack, I don't have an in."

"We should change that." Katya yawned, coughed, then seemed to wake up. "Wait. Jack Bristow is missing?"

"Someone is holding him prisoner. I'm almost certain of that." Irina's fingers gripped the heavy black receiver as though someone might try to tear it from her. Fine raindrops misted the glass surfaces of the phone booth. "I don't know who or where, but if I talk to Arvin Sloane, I might be able to get it from him. He flirts with me – I could get him drunk –"

"Wait. I understand the desire to know where your husband is, but, Irina – what is it you plan to do with this knowledge? It's not worth taking risks."

Had Katya gone completely mad? "If he's in a country where our employers have influence, then we can get Jack out."

The pause afterward lasted too long. When Katya spoke, her words were gentle – so much so that it made Irina afraid. "How, precisely, do you suggest I put this to your superiors? Have you thought about that? Can you hear yourself?"

"We make up a reason for his release. We invent an advantage they'll gain. When did you start letting facts get in the way?"

"Around the same time you completely lost your objectivity. Listen to me. If any of your other handlers had taken this call – even Elena, maybe especially her – your assignment would be over right now. Do you understand? Your affection for Bristow is tolerated because of the excellence of your work. When you compromise the work – as you are now trying to do – the tolerance ends."

Irina leaned her head back against the door. It was hard to know what was worse: the fact that Katya refused to help or the fact that Katya was right. "I shouldn't have called."

"You needed to tell us Jack's missing. That's reason enough. I won't report anything else."

"Thank you."

"What kind of a man has this effect on a Derevko? I hope your Jack lives, and not just for your sake. Someday, I have to see this specimen of masculinity for myself."

"Don't joke. I can't, not now."

Katya sighed. "I'll talk to Elena, outside the office. She won't approve any rescues, but maybe she can find something out for you."

"Thank you." Irina replaced the receiver slowly, unwilling to break the connection.

It was possible that she would be reunited with her sisters soon. She had never wanted that less.

**

Two weeks after that, Arvin called her again – at her office on campus, where Irina was trying to put in orders for textbooks for the fall term. Merely recognizing her voice sent her nearly into a state of panic, and that was before he told her his news.

"But – if Jack escaped a week ago –"

"Then he should have contacted us by now. Or just walked into the American Embassy." The silence on the other end of the line was terrible. At last Arvin said, "We don't know where Jack is. All we know is that he's no longer in custody, and he hasn't called in."

She walked out of her office without shutting the door, drove home without remembering how. Dinnertime came and went without any sensation of hunger; the night passed without any expectation of sleep. Irina still didn't cry. What she felt was too hollow for tears.

_You always thought you would leave Jack behind a devastated man,_ she told her glassy-eyed reflection in the bathroom mirror. _You thought that, no matter what, someday he would have to know. But now he's left you behind instead, and he'll never have to know. _

It wasn't comforting.

Although Irina should have contacted the KGB again, she did not. Upon hearing that her husband was possibly (probably, almost certainly) killed in action, they would either order her to return to the Soviet Union or begin setting her up to steal Arvin Sloane from his insipid wife. Either possibility seemed unbearable. Even worse would be having to say the words aloud: _Jack is dead. _

No. Not until they brought her a body, ashes, a picture, something. Irina would wait for proof.

For two days – morning to night, not pausing to sleep until her strength simply gave out – Irina worked, frantically preparing the apartment for Jack's return. She repaired the blinds in the kitchen so that they no longer got stuck at an odd angle. She scrubbed the bathroom floor with a wire brush. Their old photos were finally taken out of the shoebox they'd inhabited for years and were framed: Jack in New York in a heavy black sweater, Shelley napping in a sunbeam, both of them at the courthouse for their wedding. Irina stared at that last photo for a while after she'd framed it. Odd, to think that she hadn't loved him then, not yet.

Guilt was not a strong component of Irina's character; she hadn't known it could weigh so much.

On Sunday night, as she had once a month for the previous four years, Irina took the packet of birth-control pills from its hiding place and prepared to take the first of the cycle. Even as she raised the tablet to her mouth, the idea came to her: _Don't. _

A baby. She could give him a baby. Her handlers would be furious, but she could claim it was an accident, pretend that Jack had noticed the very first day she'd skipped, so hiding a pregnancy from him would have been impossible. Elena and Katya would make it all right. Then she and Jack would have something real, something nobody could ever take away.

Reason told her that she would have to leave the baby behind when her assignment ended – but that was in some distant, nebulous future that might never be. Throwing the pills away was something she could do for Jack right now, so she did.

**

A week and a half later, Irina rose from bed near noon; though she had scrubbed the house from ceiling to floor, more than once, she hadn't bathed in two days. Classes were due to start soon, and she was functional enough to think that she might have to call and quit her job today. After that, she could stop interacting with the outside world entirely. It would just be her and Shelley, no one else --

She knelt by Shelley's cat bed to scratch her ears and wake her. The flesh beneath the fur was cold.

"Shelley?" But the cat had died in the night, curled up peacefully on her pillow. Her tail was still tucked beneath her nose.

The last of Irina's endurance gave out. She had prepared herself for so much – but not for anything as simple than this. Not for Shelley.

A sob pushed its way up from her belly, choked her throat, contorted her face even as she clapped her hand over her mouth. Her body's weight seemed to pull her down to the floor, cool slick linoleum against her tear-hot cheek, her knees doubled up against her chest.

And then the phone rang.

Irina pushed herself onto all fours, then slid up the wall, tears still running down her face; whoever it was on the other line would have to come bury Shelley. She didn't care who it was, or what else happened. But somebody had to bury Shelley.

As soon as she brought the receiver to her ear, before she could even speak, Irina heard Arvin's voice. "Jack's alive. He's all right. He's coming home – he'll be here tonight – Laura, do you hear me? Laura?"

**

She bathed, dressed, wrapped Shelley in a towel and drove to a quiet place by the river where the earth was soft. This way, she would be by the water. Shelley had always liked to watch the light on the water.

Irina patted the loose earth over the cat's grave down with a shovel and resolved not to have another pet. Apparently they made her sentimental.

Despite Arvin's warning that Jack's plane wouldn't land until the early hours, perhaps even dawn, she made no pretense at trying to sleep. Instead Irina sat on the couch, unable to look away from the door. Her thoughts had a strange clarity that she wanted to use while she could.

Her work was meant to be performed without love or remorse. As Irina had not escaped one, she could not escape the other. It was better for her to face this now, to be ready before the next time something like this happened – a permanent separation, or the threat of it – so that she would better know how to cope. This time, there had been mistakes: revealing her desperation to Katya, above all. Katya and Elena loved her, but they would not hesitate to use the vulnerabilities she had revealed; in their place, Irina would have done the same.

Mistakes could be learned from. She would control this eventually. She could.

It was 3 a.m. when she heard the footsteps, the key in the lock. Irina ran to the door and pulled it open, even as the doorknob started to twist; the jangling of the keys was the only sound as she stared at Jack, thin and unshaven and dirty and beautiful.

"Laura –"

The false name was muffled with her lips on his, and then she was in Jack's arms again. His bags fell to the floor; she kicked the door shut, and they were on their knees, Irina was on her back, Jack's kisses were so desperate that they stole away all breath, all sound, all thought.

Her hands shook as they pulled away each other's clothes, too hungry for foreplay or bedrooms. Bruises blackened his arms and his back; on his ribs was a half-healed cigarette burn the size of a fingertip. Irina closed her eyes so that she wouldn't see his injuries; she didn't want her rage to take her away from the sensation of his skin against hers. Only when Jack was inside her again, making love to her on the floor, did the world seem real once more.

Half an hour later, they made their way to bed; Jack sank gratefully onto the mattress and didn't move again. Irina draped herself across his back to shield him from the world. She could hear his heartbeat against her ear.

She'd tell him about Shelley in the morning.

**

Within two weeks, their lives were more or less back to normal. Jack had taken the news about the cat harder than she would have thought – but it was swallowed up in his relief at being home. For the first few days, he didn't want to do anything but sleep, eat and fuck; these plans suited Irina very well.

Jack would tell her nothing specific about his time in captivity, but he told her how he had felt. "You like to pretend you can control these situations. That there's always something you can do – and then you find out you're wrong."

"There was something you could do. You got away. You came back to me."

"Luck." He said it softly, as if giving thanks.

"I don't believe in luck. I believe in fate."

"Really?" He raised an eyebrow. They were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, Mr. and Mrs. Bristow again, eating more breakfast than any normal four people would consume. "I wouldn't have guessed that about you. Not in the slightest."

Irina smiled over her juice glass. "Glad to know I can still surprise you."

That weekend, she intended to slip out to refill her prescription for birth-control pills; her decision to have a baby had faded along with the rest of her hysteria when she learned Jack was alive. But the day when she should have started came and went – as did the next. And the next.

Then, the following morning, she woke up, smiled sleepily at Jack and felt her insides turn over. "Laura?" Jack said. "You don't look good."

She realized she was going to throw up only seconds before her stomach clenched; two running steps to the bathroom, and she made it to the toilet, though just barely. Doubt became certainty.

"Shhhhh." Jack rubbed her back as she washed her face and rinsed out her mouth, and when she straightened up, he pressed a cool washcloth to the back of her neck. "Let's get you back to bed. I'll call the school for you."

"I'm fine now." Physically speaking, she was. But her heart was thumping hard, adrenalin making her shake. It was as if the panic that had led her to make such an irrational decision in the first place had come back to claim her again.

"You should lie down for a few minutes –"

_Tell him._ The thought overrode all her logic, all her training. She only knew that if she did not tell Jack immediately, she would end up telling someone else first – Elena, probably – and the following decision would not belong to her or to Jack. In this one way, they would shape their own lives. No one else would shape it for them.

Irina blurted out, "I think I'm pregnant."

Jack stopped walking. They were just outside the bathroom door, his hands on her wrist and shoulder to guide her. "But –"

"I'm never late. You know that; you just lost track of days while you were gone. And now –"

"The doctors said you couldn't."

"They said it was unlikely. They didn't say it was impossible." She ran one hand through her hair, breathing in sharply. The real reason for her certainty wasn't something she could reveal, but he needed to comprehend how sure she was. "And I know. I just – know."

Jack looked back at her, his face so blank that anyone else would have thought him expressionless. Irina knew her husband well enough to see his fear.

He hesitated for a few moments, then led her back to bed; they both sat on the edge, stunned to numbness. She tried to calculate the permutations of what she'd done, the thousand ways in which this was a bad idea, but her mind was too dazed for such a gargantuan task.

Jack's voice was unsteadier than she had ever heard it. "We never really talked about this – I didn't think we needed to." His eyes met hers. "Do you want children?"

"I don't know." She always had when she was younger, but she'd accepted childlessness when she joined the KGB and hadn't second-guessed the decision since – save for the first time she'd held Elena's baby, and her one irrational act during Jack's disappearance. "I don't know if I can raise one like this. In the shadow of your work."_ And mine. _It was as honest an answer as she could give, either to Jack or herself.

He sat with his forearms on his knees, nodding. "It doesn't seem fair."

But even as he was agreeing with her, guiding them both toward the easier solution, Irina felt herself resisting it. And something about Jack's eyes made her pause.

"Jack, do you want children?"

"Yes." She had never heard such yearning in his voice, or such confusion; only in this moment did Irina realize that her husband was as good at keeping secrets as she, that his easy acceptance of her supposed infertility had only been a mask he'd worn to protect her feelings. "But I also had – doubts. I don't know anything about being a father. I wouldn't want to be like mine, and I don't know any other way to be."

"I could help you."

The offer slipped out without consideration, without forethought. Instinct felt so much more comfortable – more real – than calculation.

Jack looked up at her, still badly frightened, but Irina could see hope there, too. "Despite the spying?"

"That's not who we are. Not all that we are, anyway." Irina did not catch her slip until she thought back on the conversation days later; Jack never caught it at all. They were distracted.

"When you told me that we couldn't – I thought it was for the best. But now – Laura –" Jack took her hand, and she gripped it, hard. "With you, maybe I could."

Someday he would have to raise this child without her. Irina realized that she would have to abandon her baby along with Jack someday; even with only a few minutes' awareness, that thought already had the power to hurt.

But if this was the deepest lie she would ever tell Jack Bristow – convincing him to become a parent by assuring him she would always be there – it was also a kind of gift. She would share his pain when she left him; she would give him something that would last. Someday Jack would be grateful for that, and she already knew that she would be too.

Irina whispered, "Then let's have a baby."

Jack didn't smile or laugh; he was more scared than she'd ever seen him, perhaps because it was himself that he feared. But then his broad hand settled over her belly, reverent in a way that she hadn't known he could be.

They lay on the bed for a long time, without words; Jack pillowed his head on her stomach, cradling her sides with his hands. As Irina ran her fingers through his hair, she found her attention shifting from him to the new life inside her, and knew Jack was doing the same.

She would never have imagined that they might love each other more deeply when they loved someone else most of all. But now Irina thought it might be like that. It would be. For this moment, she could see the future as clearly as if it were written out for her. What became of her and Jack – the wreckage their lives would become – was only a blur, but now, because of this child, they would both be anchored by the one thing between them that would always be real.

_This is the boundary_, Irina thought. _The line between truth and illusion. We have crossed it.   
_

 

THE END


End file.
